Resistance is Built on Hope (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story)
by ChronicOlicity
Summary: Rebelcaptain (Jyn Erso/Cassian Andor) World War II AU. A story of Rogue One characters coming together during a world war, under different (but hopefully interesting) circumstances. Because Rebelcaptain is beautiful and that beach scene was uncalled for and I need to fix some things. Also posted on AO3.
1. An Unexpected Offer

**Summary:**

 **The year is 1940, and Europe is at war. Jyn Erso keeps her head down, apart from the occasional brushes with the law. She doesn't care about flags or countries or sides or allegiances. She's been on her own for a good, long time, and she won't fight for anyone except herself.**  
 **So when she gets into trouble in German-occupied France, she doesn't expect anyone's help – least of all a so-called rescue party spearheaded by the Resistance, who break her out in order to make an offer that promises to change her life forever.**  
 **Her father is a scientist working for Germany, and with his help, they have the potential and capacity to inflict untold damage using a new weapon. He needs to be found, and Captain Cassian Andor thinks she's the one to do it.**  
 **A story of Rogue One characters coming together during a world war, under different (but hopefully interesting) circumstances. Because Rebelcaptain is beautiful and that beach scene was uncalled for and I need to fix some things.**

 **Author's Note:**

 **This is my first RebelCaptain fic and a first for Star Wars, so please be kind :) I don't think I'm the only one who went into that movie and came out sorta traumatized, so here's my way of processing that, and maybe a happier ending.  
I got the idea for this AU from a Tumblr post by Lafiametta. Hopefully I didn't step on any toes, but since no one was writing the idea I thought I'd give it a shot.**

* * *

 **PART ONE: A Band of Rogues**

* * *

 **Occupied France, 1940**

Jyn Erso woke with the taste of rust in her mouth and a pain in her neck. She'd slipped down in her sleep, and she silently took stock of her surroundings, letting the weightlessness of the dream slip away and leave her with the sense of gravity.

Fading orange sunlight burned through the canvas stretched across the back of the rumbling truck, striping across a dozen other pairs of shoes — men, women, thankfully no children — workmen boots and tired heels and lone dirty bare feet. Some of them were asleep like she'd been, others were staring straight ahead or at the soldiers — armed, and blocking the mouth of the truck where a patch of darkening sky vanished and reappeared in time to the flapping canvas.

Jyn avoided their eyes and looked instead to the scuffed toes of her boots, just underneath her bound wrists. The road — used in the loosest sense of the word — was rough, and every few feet meant the tires encountered a bump that sent another shudder through the truck floor, bruising her bones, huffing the breath unwillingly out of her throat.

Though she highly doubted that anyone in the German High Command was particularly concerned about the transportation conditions facing undesirable persons such as herself, except that maybe they arrived in Germany still living and breathing and passably capable of slaving away in service of the German war effort.

Maybe a farm — if she was lucky. More likely a railroad or a smoky factory.

 _This_ was real.

Not the hazy dream of a village on the outskirts of Geneva, of a small white house and green grass, the hills stretching long and mysterious in the distance. Not the blurred faces of two people she barely wanted to remember, or the words they whispered to her while she slept.

Jyn half-raised her hands as though to swat at a fly, but quickly disguised the motion as adjusting the fall of her hair, brown and unruly and twisted into a knot at the back of her head. Her grimy fingers left a smudge on her cheek, but it didn't matter.

She was Lyanna Hallique, not Jyn Erso, and what mattered was the possibility of escape — of vanishing like a perfectly-timed magic trick — to hide her hair under a cap and pretend that she wasn't an eighteen-year-old girl on her own in the world. She'd done it a thousand times before.

She'd just made a mistake this time, and past troubles had caught up — enough to put her on the roster of people more suited for the German mainland, underneath a crushing machine or between raging coal furnaces.

Jyn pulled herself slowly back up to sit against the rails at her back, and let her head rest on the moving canvas. It was a long drive to where they were going.

She had time.

Except the truck screeched to a sudden halt, and any reassurance she might have taken from the previous thought evaporated like mist. The other passengers were looking around, some frozen and unmoving — hoping it wasn't what they feared, a series of hasty executions in the middle of nowhere — murmuring to each other.

Different accents, some French, some not quite.

The soldiers at the back of the truck were speaking to each other in German. Jyn turned her head slightly, listening without looking like she was.

"We're not supposed to make stops," said Left. Young, apprehensive.

"Who knows anything these days?" said Right, with a shrug. "Maybe we are."

She heard the crunch of boots landing on dirt, the soldier in the passenger's seat disembarking. "Stay where you are," he barked.

Something wasn't right.

Jyn's eyes flicked around her surroundings for anything she could use as a weapon, but apart from the ropes around her wrists — those on the condition of actually being severed — there wasn't much.

Her fingers curled into fists.

Not that it mattered. All she needed was a chance.

Then two things happened at once.

The first was the ground behind the truck erupting in fire, and the second — somehow louder and more present — was a gunshot.

The soldier's body hit the ground, and Jyn threw herself forward as a matter of instinct, ignoring the pain of having to bend low enough with her hands tied, or the other passengers erupting in blind panic. The guards leapt off the truck in a hurry, and shots peppered the air in quick succession as they fired back on whatever had stopped them.

She was crushed against a farmer from Lyon, who was bellowing along with the others. But they all abruptly fell silent when the gunfire stopped after three more shots, and more bodies hit the ground.

A shadow flickered against the canvas, and gloved hand appeared in the crack, pushing the flaps aside and admitting a cloud of black-gray smoke with it. The truck creaked from someone climbing onto the back, metal and a rifle clicking along with the movement.

"Lyanna Hallique?" said an unfamiliar voice.

Jyn felt her spine go rigid, and she lifted her head as the voice asked again. "Lyanna Hallique?"

One of the passengers whispered something, and she felt a shove on her back, sending her stumbling forward on her knees.

The canvas parted even further, and in the uneven light of the burning fires, she saw that it was a man dressed in plainclothes. No officer's uniform. No squad. "Lyanna Hallique?" he repeated.

She nodded silently.

"How would you like to escape your present situation?" he asked, this time in English.

 _British. Anglais. British. Anglais._ The others were whispering behind her, eyeing the stranger with apprehension. She'd spoken the language alongside French since her hair was in braids, but something about it rang of a test. She was supposed to be a French prisoner, as her alias — along with her use of the language — was meant to cement beyond doubt.

Then again, she hadn't exactly planned for the situation where a condition of her freedom hinged on breaking character for just a second.

Jyn shoved her hands out. "Much obliged," she answered.

A knife sawed through the ropes around her wrists, but they'd barely touched the ground before Jyn shoved her elbow into his chest and slammed her knee into his side, sending him crashing into the other passengers.

She cleared his sprawled body in a single leap and bounded towards the mouth of the truck. There was another waiting at the entrance, but she braced her hands against the floor and threw herself into a skid that landed both her boots onto the man's chest in a solid kick. He went flying, and Jyn dropped hard on her feet, stumbling a little too close to the fires. They were burning across the road in craters and billowing thick clouds of smoke, like someone had dug them into the dirt and set them off as a trap. She accidentally sucked in a mouthful of ash and coughed, her hand pressed to her nose and mouth as she whirled, looking for cover.

 _Go._

She plunged into the smoke again, but an arm swung out of nowhere and caught her solidly around the middle, knocking her flat onto her back — along with all the oxygen from her lungs.

Even though her vision was watering furiously from the haze, she could make out a uniform — an officer of the _Wehrmacht_ , the German army.

Along with the click of a pistol, trained efficiently on her in a wordless warning not to move.

"I wouldn't advise trying to escape, if I were you," said a clipped British voice, as jarring as hearing English after months of French and German. "It would be most unwise, as I estimate the probability of your reaching civilization with no supplies or transport at a low 12.65%."

There was an unmistakable sardonic tone to his voice, and Jyn felt her temper flare. She struggled to sit upright, glaring fiercely at the stranger — blond, pale, cut and chiseled like a mold wholeheartedly approved by the Third Reich. Apart from the English, which pointed to him being a spy. "What the hell is going on?" she demanded.

The German-English officer-spy looked briefly down at the ground, then back at her, as though she'd asked something perfectly obvious. "Ah, well," he said. "I believe, Miss Hallique, that you are in the process of being rescued."

It was her turn to be sarcastic. "Rescued," she repeated.

He reached down and grabbed her roughly by the arm, hauling her back onto her feet. "Yes," he said, no less sarcastic than she'd been. " _Rescued_."

Jyn didn't answer, because more figures were emerging from the fog. Whatever the hell was happening — she wasn't entirely clear on, but she _did_ know for sure that the last thing she felt was relief.

This wasn't going to end well. For them, _or_ her.

* * *

Jyn stumbled on the uneven floor, her arm in someone else's grip and a sack over her head.

"Mind the step," said Officer Spy, an intentional few seconds too late.

"Thanks," she answered.

There was movement all around her and she straightened up, conscious of a conversation stalling and an unseen number of eyes resting on her. Appraising. Suspicion was in the air like the sharp taste of rain.

A door shut with a heavy crank, iron slamming on iron, and the bag was suddenly whipped from her face, exposing her surroundings.

It was a windowless cellar lit by guttering orange bulbs, hanging naked from worn wires. The wooden table at the center of the room was circular and covered with papers that multiple people were hastily clearing away, and Officer Spy gave her a nudge towards the only open chair.

People were retreating into the shadows at the edges of the room, watching but unwilling to be watched.

"Virginie Lyra Erso," said Officer Spy, reading from an open file. "Eighteen years of age, born in Germany but later resident of a charming village outside Geneva, followed by what appears to be a fascinating jaunt around the world in no particular order or significance. Places of residence — and criminal activity — include Poland, Morocco, France, and Great Britain, among others. Forgery of official documents, impersonating and stealing identities, smuggling, resisting capture and arrest, and general violent behavior appear to be your chosen areas of expertise on the wrong side of the law, while languages of fluency include French, German and — of course — English."

He flipped the file shut and looked towards a corner. "She also took out two of our officers before she was taken."

" _Violent behavior_ was right," came the answer, in accented English. It was light, but decidedly marked him as someone just about as native to France as Officer Spy.

Spain, she guessed. Maybe somewhere on the Southern American continent.

"Do you have anything else to say in your defence?" Officer Spy queried, in a way that suggested he was less than serious about turning it into a genuine trial.

Jyn kept staring straight ahead. She wasn't fooled. It was a trial, and now she was being asked to confirm the rumors, the whispers, to verify what they wanted to know and subject herself to an evaluation.

She'd felt a flutter of panic — a betrayal of her nerves — at the mention of her real name, the name nobody should have known. Not in this life, anyway.

"It's Jyn," she said, flatly. "Not Virginie."

"Jyn Erso," said the voice in the shadows. "Why not _Jane_? Suits you just as well, I imagine."

He was making fun of her now, and she just barely kept her tone free of defensiveness. "Because it's not my name."

"Jyn Erso it is, then," Officer Spy said. "Miss Erso, I must apologize for the rather abrupt manner of our meeting, but times of war mean the niceties cannot always be observed."

Jyn looked pointedly at her boots — stolen — and dusty slacks, the collared workman's shirt belted around her waist and the threadbare jacket thrown over everything else. "Do I look like the kind of person who cares about social graces?"

"She's right, Kay," said Shadow Voice. "Get to the point, or she'll kill us with her stare."

" _Stop it_ ," she snapped, and spun around in the chair to glare at Officer Spy — who apparently went by the name Kay. "What is this? Are you going to shoot me, or send me on to a work camp?"

"If we were going to shoot you point-blank in the head, don't you think we would have done it before the fire-bombs?" Kay returned, dryly. "But if you're so keen on wasting away at a German labor camp, by all means, if you decline our offer, we'll put you right back where we found you."

"Offer?" she said, feeling her skin prickle with apprehension. "What offer?"

A shape emerged from the darkness, and Jyn's eyes took in the source of her verbal antagonizer. He was…unexpected, and Jyn couldn't quite put her finger on the reason why. Maybe he looked like someone who could be a friend — in theory, anyway, and theoretical information formed the bulk of Jyn's views on friendship.

It wasn't because he was handsome. Not really. Not in the carved and chiseled way that his partner Kay was, _obvious_ , easy, but there was something about his face that made it distinctive, that gave it character. That drew the eye.

Jyn felt herself retreat from the thought like she'd been burned, and made sure that when she made eye contact, it was only so he could see what she wanted him to.

Which was _not a goddamn thing_.

"Do you know who we are?" he asked, quietly.

Jyn felt another shiver creep up her skin. "No," she lied, because a part of her didn't want it to be true.

A smile curled the corner of his mouth, like he knew. "The Resistance," he said. "And we want to make you an offer to join us."

Jyn felt a smile grow on her face to mirror his, but not for the same reasons. "Why?" she said, almost a laugh. "What use could the Resistance have for someone like me?"

"Don't pretend to be naïve, Miss Erso," said Kay. "You know as well as we do that the only difference between your record and one of our spies is the fact that you don't act for anything but self-interest. Politics and a greater cause is clearly not a concern for you."

Jyn knew the words were meant to sting, and she refused to let them. Defiance was another one of her implied attributes, along with the criminal record Kay had just recited. "When you've lived the way I have, you'll understand that political opinions are a luxury you can't afford."

"Yes, why should anyone form a political opinion about the various behaviors perpetrated by Herr Hitler and his chosen command?" Kay said. "For the life of me, I can't imagine why."

"You haven't answered my question," she said. "Why not someone else? I don't share your politics — and I certainly don't share your allegiances. I'm sure there's someone else like me who does. Why does the Resistance want my help?"

Kay lifted his eyes to the ceiling in visible — demonstrated — exasperation. "Cassian, I believe it's your turn."

 _Cassian_. Jyn's eyes flicked over to him again, as he moved, silent, almost catlike, to stand at the table, in the light.

"Because of your father," he said, and she went very still.

Beneath the table, her hands were in fists, twisted into the worn fabric of her slacks, because she was a child again — nine and a half, nearly ten — hiding in the tall grass with her body pressed to the trembling soil, watching her father being dragged away and her mother's fierce shout, followed by twin gunshots that changed her world forever.

But before that, her father's arms wrapped around her tight, and his kiss on her forehead. He'd called her _Jyn_ , not Virginie, because the name made her feel heavy, and she'd always soared on light feet, too fast sometimes even for him to catch.

He'd called her _stardust_ too, like it was their little secret — just one of many that he'd kept.

 _Jyn, whatever I do, I do it to protect you. Say you understand_.

"Galen Erso, Danish-born scientist who once worked for the German government on projects of great importance," Cassian said, like he was reciting from memory. "He disappeared for some time, taking his wife and child with him, almost as if he — they — never existed."

"He's dead," Jyn said, telling herself that it was to save them the trouble. "They killed him. They came to our house and killed him and my mother. I ran before they could take me too — because my parents knew they'd come, one day. They prepared me to run. My father is dead."

"Except he's not."

It was Kay who spoke this time, because Cassian had been studying Jyn without a word, with the kind of intentness that was easier to pretend not to notice. She turned slowly to look at him. "What did you say?" she asked.

"I said 'he's not'," Kay said, tapping two fingers against his temple. "As a matter of fact, Galen Erso is still very much alive."

Jyn's stare was unwavering, sharp as a blade, like she was digging it into his skin to make him tell her. "How do you know?"

Kay stared unflinchingly back. "Because we've been tracking him. He returned to Germany and resumed his old post with their scientific advancement division. In the buildup to the war, we believe that his expertise in biochemical engineering proved very useful to those in charge, and he's been repurposed towards developing weapons to the benefit of Germany's war machine."

Jyn sat a little straighter in her chair, holding herself like any sign of relenting — even for a fraction of a second — would shatter her shell into a million pieces. She'd assumed; she'd been so small, scared, unwilling to believe that her world was falling apart. She'd assumed, after seeing her mother fall, that it meant her father had died too.

Double gunshots. Two bodies.

But her father was alive. Alive, and working for Germany. _Helping them_.

Her eyes fluttered shut, briefly, and when she opened them again — she was Jyn Erso, the orphan who answered to no one.

"Then you should be speaking to him — not me," she said. "I don't know about science, or about weapons. I just know how to rebel, for no one's cause but my own."

"That sounds like a luxury to me," Cassian interjected. "But this is wartime, Jane, and we believe that you're the only person who can reach your father, and prevent the kind of damage he could inflict on innocent people."

 _He wouldn't_ , she thought, when she should have reminded herself that he was dead. Because it was supposed to be easier that way.

Their eyes locked, and Jyn saw a surprising depth of understanding in someone no better than a stranger, and a two-faced spy.

"Maybe he didn't have a choice," Cassian said softly, and Jyn had to look away.

Kay exhaled, as though it was the punctuation at the end of a sentence. "The fact of the matter is, our superiors have given us a mission: recruit Jyn Erso for the Resistance, with the promise of freedom after the satisfactory resolution of Galen Erso's case, or return her to meet whatever fate awaits the alias Lyanna Hallique. This might be an unsolicited opinion, but one of those options seems, by my estimation, more likely to result in your survival than the other. By 52%, in case you're interested."

A pause, allowing the information to sink in.

"So, what'll it be, Miss Erso? We're rather pressed for time, I'm afraid."

Jyn felt a hard lump at the base of her throat, but she kept her face blank and unreadable. She'd been on the wrong side of the law for most of her life, but it all paled in comparison to what they were asking of her, though she wasn't naïve enough to see it as anything short of an order. Escaping a second time from the transport route would be next to impossible, especially since the incident had guaranteed she would be closely watched — if not shot on sight.

She knew that working for the Resistance would be dangerous. A different kind of danger, apart from the recklessness of forging travel papers and starting a brawl in the streets. It was the kind that meant she would actively become an enemy of a nation, a subversive actor trying to destabilize them from within.

Not a civilian anymore.

An enemy soldier who would be shown no mercy.

 _But._

Her father.

It was her weakness, and they — a unit made up of one stranger who thought and analyzed in mathematical probabilities, and another who spoke like he'd known her for years — knew it.

"You can find him," Cassian said, and Jyn knew what she was going to choose. "You can find your father."

Jyn lifted her head, and sensed both men going still in anticipation, as though — in spite of all their understanding and their calculations — there was an element of the unpredictable about her. Volatile. Uncontrollable. "Fine," she said.

 _You have no idea_.

* * *

 **General things:**

 **I know "Jyn" is a strange name for someone to have during WWII, but it felt really weird to me to call her anything else, so I (hopefully) chose a name that could plausibly lead to the nickname "Jyn". I know, clearly I don't get the concept of an AU fic, right? :D Anyway, I'll try not to change names as far as possible - that's just my policy.  
Hope you enjoyed that, and if you did, please let me know that you're interested in seeing this AU continue. I have a story plan in place, and I'd love to do it either way, but it helps to know that I'm going in a direction of general interest.  
Comments and suggestions (like what characters you want to see) are very much appreciated.  
Cheers :)**


	2. Trust Goes Both Ways

**Notes: **

**Thanks for the responses! All kind, and much appreciated. Here's chapter two :)**

* * *

 **Trust Goes Both Ways**

Her mother's hands were shaking, fumbling with the knot holding the cord around her throat. Jyn watched the crystal on the end of the quivering string in silent fascination. She'd been allowed to play with it, but always with the unspoken understanding that it belonged to her mother, which made it all the more an object of interest. It was an unpolished thing, colorless and cloudy, shaped almost like a fang or a flower bud, depending on Jyn's mood. But it was beautiful for its simplicity, mysterious, catching the light when it came and holding the glow in its center for longer than what should have been possible.

Now the necklace had been transferred to her neck, to rest at the base of her narrow throat. Her mother's hands were steadier now, as though they knew they were approaching the end of an important task.

"You know what to do, don't you?" she whispered, gently putting a hand on the crystal as though to settle it in Jyn's possession. "You know where to go?"

Jyn nodded, trying to be calm like she'd been taught, but it didn't stop the stab of panic when her mother wrapped her in a hug, fierce and tight. She'd clutched at her mother's clothes, unwilling to break apart. "Trust your father, and trust me," she said. "Trust that we'll always be with you."

They were at the base of the hills behind the house, grass and trees curving up to hide the sky. Jyn felt the ground shake beneath her feet, rattling, as though it was made of pieces about to come apart.

She looked up at the sky, and the crystal burned hot against her chest.

"Jyn?" her mother said. "Jyn?"

There was a crash, and Jyn snapped upright in her seat. The safety straps were taut across her chest, stopping her from lurching forward into a fall, and she exhaled — careful, controlled — until her heart stopped racing.

The crash she'd heard was probably something metal on the plane, one of the many parts, exterior and interior, that were screaming as though they were about to pull apart and plunge them all towards the ground.

Jyn squinted against the white glow streaming in from the plane window, and she unsnapped herself from the harnesses — ignoring the protests from her cold and cramped muscles — rising to look through the glass.

It was a world blanketed in white, rolling mountains and shining water beneath the same gray skies. She rested her chin on her hands and watched her breath turn to mist on the glass, silently wishing she could send her dreams away on the clouds that passed beneath the plane.

The crystal was still nestled against her throat, beneath her clothes, as close to her heart as it had been since she was nine years old.

 _Nine years later_.

She looked over her shoulder and around the plane. It was littered with strangers who'd been picked up at the same location, all of them ignoring her or dozing in their seats like she'd been just minutes before. Kay and Cassian were the only two who qualified as slightly short of strangers, also boasting a head start in the category of personal dislike, but Kay had been in the cockpit since takeoff, and Cassian was asleep in a seat to her right, his head unmoving and faced away from her.

It was as close to privacy as Jyn would ever get, and she fished the necklace out by its length of worn cord and let the pendant hang from her outstretched fingers, watching it turn slowly — dreamily — as the light and clouds and refracted snow were drawn into the heart of the white crystal.

"That's a pretty necklace," said Cassian, and Jyn snapped her fist shut around the crystal, hiding it against her throat. "But you don't seem like a girl who holds onto trinkets."

Jyn dropped the necklace back out of sight, and put her arms on the window ledge like all she'd been doing was looking out. "I don't seem like a lot of things," she said, and glanced at him. "Were you watching me?"

Cassian angled his face to catch the light, like a cat looking for the sun so it could stretch. "It's my job," he said, matter-of-factly. "And I'm good at my job."

"Sounds like your job is occupational distrust," she observed.

Jyn pretended she wasn't needling him out of slightly spiteful retaliation, because she didn't like to be watched, or spied on, or restrained.

And she was. She would be.

By him, by Kay, by whoever they sent her out to meet.

Cassian nodded slightly, as though he agreed. "Blind trust doesn't win wars, Jane," he said, and the intentional use of a wrong name made her prickle with irritation again. "People like me collect information and recruit for the Resistance, and we do it well for a reason."

"Because you spy, and you watch, and you doubt," Jyn mumbled, tracing patterns on the glass with her fingertip. "How do you expect to work with me if you can't trust me?"

Something in Cassian's face grew still, and serious. "Because I always carry a gun, and my orders are to shoot you if I — or Kay — believe you are a danger to the cause."

Jyn felt herself smile, as though getting him to admit the crude contingency method was something of a victory. "Just promise me you'll do it after I've had some food," she said. "I'm _starving_."

* * *

A blast of icy air whipped at Jyn's hair and clothes as the bay doors lowered into the snow. She raised one arm to protect her face against the wind, swept towards them by the slowing propeller blades.

"Where are we?" she shouted over the noise, half-expecting them not to answer.

Cassian tossed a pack to Kay, who caught it without comment. "Oh dear," he said, looking at the time. "I believe you're already late."

The two men grinned briefly at each other like it was an inside joke, and Jyn, silently imagining what it would be like to kick them solidly somewhere, followed them down to the tarmac. Their legs were longer and they walked like they had somewhere to be, which meant Jyn had to jog lightly to keep up.

Uniformed men — and it was all men, as far as she could tell — walked or ran past their group, clearly occupied with their training, though Jyn pulled the hood more securely over her head, hiding her hair. Stares, she could handle, but she was used to avoiding attention as the only way to survive.

There was more grass than she was expecting to see for a place affiliated with the military, broad flat plains of snow and mountains rising up towards the clouds, trees so dense and dark they looked almost black in the distance. The buildings in comparison were flat and unremarkable gray cement, and their path took them past a stretch of water, its surface shuddering under the gusts of cold air that blew in from due north.

"The lake's rather cold this time of year," Kay told her. "Rest assured, I have no qualms whatsoever about throwing you into it for insubordination, the likelihood of which I estimate to be 67%."

"He means well," Cassian said in an undertone, striding alongside her. "He's just used to people giving up arguments with him because he uses numbers."

Jyn narrowed her eyes slightly, not just to protect her eyes from the cold. She wasn't fooled by Cassian's attempt at establishing a rapport over Kay's detached unfriendliness. He'd already admitted that he had the autonomy to shoot her once she'd outlived her use, and she'd be a fool to forget it.

Tactics and strategy, and games played on invisible chessboards. Surround her with strangers and present familiar faces, conveniently friendly, parading the possibility of companionship underneath her nose like it might induce her to spill all her secrets.

"How long will I be — here — _wherever_ this is?" she asked.

"That depends," Kay said. "Recruits are required to learn everything from navigation, weapons assembly, demolition skills, cryptography, escape and evasion techniques, parachute jumping — basics for survival in hostile territory. Then again, most of them have a background in standard army training or none at all."

"You're saying I'm a special case?" Jyn said.

"I'm saying that we've been given the clearance to accelerate the formalities of your training, and let's face it, _formalities_ is the polite way of describing the kind of time you'll be wasting if we run you through the basics at the pace of normal recruits. From what I've heard, you're more than capable of dismantling a car in the middle of a busy street and trading it off for parts."

Jyn shrugged her shoulders. "It wasn't a busy street."

She could sense Kay rolling his eyes, along with Cassian's quiet amusement. "Cassian will be overseeing your physical and weapons training, I will be responsible for your course in cryptography and transmissions. Between the two of us, you should be as well prepared for the field as anyone else. Any questions?"

They'd entered one of the squat gray buildings now, and were proceeding down a corridor lined with identical doors. "Just one," Jyn said, pulling the snow-encrusted hood from her face. "Where's my father?"

Cassian and Kay were both flanking an open door, undoubtedly the room she was meant to be staying in for the duration of her so-called accelerated training, but Jyn didn't move. The pack she carried swung against the side of her leg, while the light layer of snow slowly melted on her clothes and boots, but she stared unwaveringly at Cassian, because he was the one who'd made the promise.

"You said I'd find him," she said. "You promised."

"You will," Cassian answered, briefly touching her arm. "But first, you need to show us that you can do this."

The challenge was clear, as though knew that she worked best in the face of a challenge.

"But not trusted," she returned, echoing what he'd told her on the plane.

"There's no such thing as trust here," he said bluntly. "Learn that, and your father may not be so far out of reach after all."

Jyn moved past Cassian into the room, sparing a brief glance for the view of the lake through the frosted glass. "Maybe there is," she said, knowing that the both of them were watching her. "But there never seems to be — because trust only works if it goes both ways."

"Look, Cassian, the girl with the record of a street criminal wants to teach us about trust," Kay said sarcastically. "Should I supplement your wisdom with my advice for winning Olympic races?"

Cassian didn't take Kay up on his line of humor, and his eyes never left Jyn's face, not when he reached for the door to pull it closed. "You should get some rest," he said. "It's a long day tomorrow."

* * *

Cassian nodded his head in thanks, watching as his cup was filled with steaming tea. Kay had already taken possession of the milk jug, but Cassian made no move to pick up his drink. The Americans were better with that — coffee and fizz and sugar, things that kept you awake because they could. Tea always made him feel like he was about to be put to sleep.

"So." General Draven circled around his desk and seated himself in a tall leather chair. "You brought the girl."

"I prefer the term _charming murderess_ , but she's not as charming as I thought she'd be," Kay said matter-of-factly, raising the cup to his lips.

"She's got a colorful record, that's true," the General agreed. "But she's not the first. We've made good spies out of defectors and traitors before."

"She's different," Kay said. "Defectors and traitors take sides. Jyn Erso doesn't fight for anyone except Jyn Erso."

Instead of looking discouraged, Draven seemed interested. "Can that be changed?" he asked, and Cassian stayed silent even as the General's gaze flicked his way.

"I could hang her upside down from her ankles and prance around singing _God Save the King_ at the top of my voice," Kay suggested, again dryly. "But I doubt it. She's far too set in her ways."

"You don't have to remind me of your views, Major Kay," Draven said, sounding almost amused by the vivid image he'd been presented. "You don't think she's a good fit. But I'm not the only one who thinks the benefits outweigh the risks, especially if Galen Erso is as crucial to the Germans as our intelligence suggests. The man's a bloody genius — better than Turing, Thomson and Einstein — and unless he's dealt with, there'll be hell to pay."

"Well, I don't think anyone should start speaking German just yet, General," Kay said. "I just can't help but think proceeding with Miss Erso in tow will only end badly, especially since she hasn't been told that the best-case scenario for the Allies is her father's swift termination."

"The order's not fixed," Draven reminded them, sharply. "We need to assess our options with Erso before we resort to termination. We need to know if he's likely to be turned."

In lieu of an answer, Kay took another measured sip of tea, but Cassian — still listening in silence — knew what his partner was thinking. He probably already knew the likelihood down to the last decimal point, and in his detached, businesslike manner, had reached the conclusion that Galen Erso wasn't likely to survive the war, one way or the other.

Draven glowered at the sunset through his office window. "Your previous instructions still stand. Jyn Erso is the best chance we have at finding Galen Erso, and after that moment, she becomes expendable. Keep her, lose her, it doesn't matter once her father's found."

Cassian reached out and turned the cup around in its saucer, again pretending as though there was nothing to see.

"Understood, General. Now, I think I ought to check on Miss Erso," Kay said, getting to his feet. "I believe she mentioned that she was in the mood to _feed_."

Based on tone alone, it was as if Jyn was an unruly new pet that had been foisted onto him, and Cassian hastily got up as well, just in case the two ended up disagreeing. He had a feeling the General wouldn't appreciate a new recruit splattering food all over the canteen in some kind of retaliatory warfare with the Major.

"Of course. But I'd like a moment alone with Captain Andor," said Draven. "Thank you, Major Kay."

If Kay was surprised, he didn't show it. He only nodded and excused himself. The door clicked shut, and Cassian lowered himself back into the chair he'd been about to vacate.

"You're awfully quiet today," said Draven. "What's the matter, boy?"

Cassian shook his head. "Erso is difficult. She won't be easy to train."

"You know as well as I do that training isn't the problem for her," Draven said gruffly. "She could snap someone's neck and blow a hole through a moving target, no questions asked, if it was worth her while. What's really bothering you?"

Cassian didn't speak, but Draven knew him too well to need much of an answer. "It won't be easy, especially since it'll likely be you behind the rifle," he said understandingly. "But you've killed for the cause before, and you know Galen Erso is dangerous."

 _Yes, I have_ , Cassian thought, silently. _So why am I hesitating?_

"I knew your father, and your brother," Draven said, bending slightly to look him in the eye. "They knew what had to be done. It wasn't pretty, it wasn't always noble, but by god, it was necessary. You're cut from the same cloth, and I don't want you to forget it."

Cassian nodded, because it didn't. It didn't bother him, not in the least.

"Make her trust you." Draven paused, weighing Cassian with one of his measured stares. "You've done it before."

They both knew how it usually ended, but Cassian didn't mention it, and neither did he. "Yes, sir," he said.

* * *

Jyn woke early, and she knew it because she could taste the fresh sunrise, the extra chill in the air that the sun hadn't burned off quite yet. She lay in her narrow bed, staring up at the ceiling with an arm propped behind her head. It was streaked with faint yellow, and she hooked her finger into the cord around her neck — absentminded as habit — and held the crystal up to the light.

 _Where are you?_

Thinking of her parents had become something she'd shunned on instinct, like touching her skin to hot metal because she knew it would burn. Except now it wasn't supposed to — but she still shied away from it, not used to the freedom of being able to think about her father. _Alive_.

He'd be older now, wearier, but no less brilliant, his mind as full of puzzles and stories as before. Would he recognize her, after all these years? What could they say to each other, after all this time?

"I'll find you," she whispered, as the crystal spun in a slow, steady circle, glowing like a star in the dawn. "I promise."

It was a strange thing to realize, but Jyn knew it was time to get used to this — this feeling. Light and hot inside her chest, like she could run the length of a field and still be laughing by the end of it, like she could spring from the ground and fly.

 _Hope_.

* * *

 **Notes:**

 **Dun, dun. Intrigue. (Ish)**  
 **The next chapters are going to be about her training, but I don't think I'll spend too much time on it. I mean, we all know that the fun stuff happens out in the field, don't we? ;)**


	3. Not a Bad Start

**Hey, everyone! Happy 2017, and good riddance to 2016. It sucked, for various reasons that don't need stating, but here's to the new year only going onward and upward :)**

* * *

 **Not a Bad Start**

"Good lord," said Kay, over a half-finished tin mug of tea. "I don't think I've ever seen another human being eat the way you just did without bursting at the seams."

Jyn, her mouth full of scrambled eggs, tore a roll in half and held it out to Kay, mainly to irritate him, not because he might actually accept. Highly unlikely, given the scandalized look on his face.

"No, thank you," he answered, after she maintained eye contact, chewing the whole time. "I'm full."

Jyn smirked and used the bread as a makeshift spoon for more eggs (Kay made a faint noise, looking like he'd swallowed something decidedly unpleasant). "So," she said, scanning the crowded canteen. "People are staring."

"I'm surprised you noticed anything over the sound of your chewing," he answered. "But yes, I do believe you are something of an anomaly to the recruits."

That was indisputably true. The small table she sat at counted as the only out-of-place one in a sea of a completely male population. Jyn pushed a fork into her food and moved it around the tray. "They've never seen a girl before?"

"Maybe the more recently arrived recruits, but no, Miss Erso, I don't believe they've seen a woman on this facility who isn't in a nurse or a cook uniform."

"And why's that?" she asked. "Women do what they can — just better."

Kay hastily turned his laugh into a hacking cough. "Yes, well, I'm not the one you should speak to about altering the Ministry's recruitment pool. Though I do believe the female _saboteur_ can be an incredibly effective weapon against the enemy, if used in the proper way."

"The _Ministry_ ," Jyn repeated, latching onto the keyword like it was the first hint of what was really going on. "That's what you call your…spy ring?"

Kay laughed again, like she'd said something funny. "Churchill's Secret Army, the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare… _we_ don't call it anything, Miss Erso. The best secret weapons are the ones that don't look like it — and rest assured, we keep that policy _very_ well here."

"I don't see what that has to do with recruiting women," Jyn said, offhandedly. "So is there any way to make them stop staring?"

"I highly doubt it," Kay said, finishing his tea. "Just go about your business, Miss Erso. Captain Andor and myself will make sure you won't be bothered."

Jyn raised an eyebrow, not in surprise at a so-called _kindness_ , but because it wasn't what she'd meant. "I can handle myself, with or without you and _Captain Andor_."

"That's a shame," said Cassian, from behind her, and Jyn gave an inward sigh at the nonexistent mercies of terrible timing. "I'm afraid you'll be stuck with me all morning."

"And instruction with me in the afternoon," Kay said. "I can _hardly_ wait. You seem like a marvelous student, Miss Erso."

He nodded to Cassian as he got to his feet, like it was the successful handoff of a (troublesome) package. "Good morning," he said briskly, apparently treating it as a sufficient goodbye.

Jyn was slightly sorry to see Kay leave, mostly because he seemed easier to irritate than Cassian. Then again, the day was still young, and physical exertion had a way of wearing down one's defences. She'd just have to see about antagonizing her temporary instructor.

"Finished?" Cassian said, eyeing her mostly empty tray. "I could hear Kay grumbling about your eating habits all the way from the barracks."

Jyn pretended she wasn't in a hurry, and finished the last few mouthfuls of scrambled eggs while Cassian waited by the table. Far from being fazed, he reached over and pinched the last piece of her torn breakfast roll. "How many of these have you eaten?" he asked.

Jyn shrugged. "Enough."

Instead of looking as appalled as Kay had, he smiled. "Good," he said. "Then you're ready to go."

* * *

Jyn had already noted Cassian's ability to switch rapidly from _friendly face_ to _commanding officer_ at the first — and sometimes undetectable — sign of trouble, but now she knew that he was completely at ease with long silences, not saying a word from the moment they left the canteen together, even upon reaching the outdoors.

Not that Jyn was the loquacious type, but Cassian without Kay meant that she wouldn't be interrupted every two sentences by a sarcastic interjection, and after some consideration — she had questions.

"So where are we?" she asked, throwing a look over her shoulder at the vast lake. "You and Kay never answered me."

Cassian made a sound under his breath as though the question was an obvious one. "Ah, we didn't mean to leave you curious. Kay likes to tease," he said. "We're near Inverness — Scotland. Far, far up on the map."

"I _know_ where Scotland is," Jyn said, before he could assume that she was as silly as Kay seemed to think.

"I know," he said. "You've been in England before."

Jyn sidestepped the probable attempt to steer the conversation towards her record (though why Cassian felt the need to, given all the information they already had, she had no idea), and moved on to the next item on her priorities.

Puzzling out Captain Cassian Andor.

"So you're a Captain," Jyn said, striding rapidly to match his longer legs. "But you're not English, are you?"

Cassian's smile was short-lived, but warm. "What gave me away?" he answered, nodding to more uniformed strangers as they passed. "You ask a lot of questions, Jane."

" _Jyn_."

"No, I'm not English," he said. "I was born in Mexico, I lived in Mexico for most of my life, and I never thought I'd leave it for cities on the European continent or America — not for something like this. But then again, I don't think anyone did."

Self-deprecating. Disarmingly forthright, for someone who worked as a spy.

"You talk like someone who's seen a lot," Jyn guessed. "Not your first war?"

From the brief pause, she guessed that she'd managed to surprise Cassian. "Not my first war," he agreed. "I was in Spain when the _republicanos_ fought the _nacionales_."

"The civil war?" Jyn almost fell behind at the unexpected answer. "But you're so…young."

"You're eighteen," he reminded her. "I was your age when I fought against the rebels."

A hasty mental calculation put his age somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-two, give or take a year. Jyn was a little surprised, thought he seemed older — maybe because of the way he spoke, like he'd seen more than the others. Maybe she'd overestimated how easily spying came to him. Maybe there was a weakness there, a chink in the armor.

"And now you're a rebel yourself," she said lightly, even while the gears inside her head turned and turned.

Cassian gave her another brief smile. "Funny how these things work out, no?"

"Hilarious," Jyn muttered, watching her breath turn silver in the cold.

"Your necklace," Cassian said, after a few seconds' worth of unobjectionable silence. "You were playing with it on the plane here. Who gave it to you?"

It took Jyn a second to realize that he was talking about the crystal hanging around her throat, hidden, and that of all things to be curious about, he'd alighted on something so small and insignificant.

In theory, anyway. Since no one on the outside was meant to know what the necklace meant to her, and she intended to keep it that way. Jyn _hm_ -ed under her breath, nearly a chuckle — in the absence of genuine humor. "That's not how this works," she said, with a toss of her head. "Just because you tell me things doesn't mean I'm obliged to return the favor."

Cassian half-blocked her way by walking backwards, his arms behind his back. "I didn't know you were setting the rules," he said, and his voice was almost playful.

Jyn looked on, unimpressed. "I've been alone for most of my life, so I'm used to setting my own rules. I don't take orders, and I certainly don't have to tell strangers anything I don't want them to know, even if they _happen_ to be fighters for the Resistance. Or put up a good fight in Spain."

Cassian inclined his head and fell back into step beside her, all without missing a beat. "I wouldn't say that to anyone but me," he said. "Even if I'm _only_ a stranger."

The words sounded serious, but Jyn knew he was teasing her from the gleam in his eye. They slowed eventually in one of the complexes, a freezing courtyard surrounded on three sides by cement buildings identical to the one she'd spent the night in. There was already a line of recruits in the center, and she felt their curiosity over the small distance like a red-hot mark in the center of her head.

She didn't move to fall in line. She didn't want to, and Cassian didn't make her.

So she stood next to him, apart from the other strangers, and waited to see what came next.

As soon as Jyn had walked in, even before she'd silently declined to stand shoulder to shoulder with the other men, she'd felt the curiosity turn to practiced derision, the familiar fallback of reacting to a woman being in the army like the rest of them. They were murmuring, laughing. Men that were built stocky and tall and solid and average, but all bigger than her and broader, a contrast that was only made increasingly plain the longer she stood in front of them.

"Is this your idea of a training exercise?" she asked, after the order to get into line never came.

Cassian pulled the gloves from his hands, cold notwithstanding, and shrugged off his jacket, dropping it onto the ground. "I'm afraid you'll have to trust me on this one, Jane."

" _Jyn_."

Again, the same smile — unexpectedly impish for someone who looked as serious as he did. "I'll need a volunteer for this," he said. "Would anyone like to assist me?"

There was a pause. "For what, sir?" one of them asked.

Cassian gestured at Jyn. "I'd like someone to partner up with Miss Erso to demonstrate some techniques," he said. "Since she'll be taking your advanced class starting today."

That was news to Jyn, but she was more interested by the rumble of laughter that traveled through the group, the buzzing like there was a joke she wasn't in on. Not to mention the various disbelieving looks that swept her from head to toe, like there had to be some kind of mistake.

"No takers?" Cassian sounded genuinely surprised. "Really?"

"Maybe if it was a dance partner," jeered someone from the right.

Jyn felt her eyebrow curve again, but Cassian had already found the recruit who'd spoken up. "I think we have a volunteer," he said, and signaled for him to step forward. "Your name?"

The recruit swaggered up to the front, with the easy — and visible — confidence that came from being one of the biggest in the group.

 _Like there's some kind of pride to be found in being mostly brawn_ , Jyn thought, nastily.

"Jack Brooks, sir," he said.

"Thank you for your contribution," Cassian said, with the kind of politeness that verged on suspicious. To Jyn, anyway. "Now — if you please."

Brooks only blinked at the wave of Cassian's hand, visibly not getting the message. "Sir, what am I supposed to do with her? She's tiny."

Cassian lifted his shoulders, like the answer was obvious. "Fight," he said. "Your instructor tells me this is a class in hand-to-hand techniques. So _fight_."

"Not _that_ kind of hand-to-hand," someone called, loudly.

"Sorry, but I think someone needs to show her how to make a fist first," Brooks said. "And I don't hit women."

"So chivalry _does_ live on," Jyn muttered, and Cassian flashed her a warning look.

"If you think a demonstration of technique requires you to teach Miss Erso how to — as you say — _make a fist_ , then by all means, do," Cassian said, and gestured for Brooks to go ahead. "We wouldn't want the fight to progress unevenly, do we?"

Jyn glared at him in silence, wondering if he was trying to annoy her by openly supporting the assumption that she was a ditzy civilian girl, one who'd wandered into the wrong finishing school by accident.

"So you roll your fingers together," Brooks was saying, slow and deliberate, while the others laughed. "That there's a fist. Why don't you give punching a try, sweetheart? Real nice and slow, like."

Cassian had a hand over his mouth, but when Jyn glanced at him — again in annoyance — she caught a covert wink.

Which she took to mean: _go right ahead_.

So she made a fist and punched Brooks across the jaw, sending him sprawling into the dirt at her feet. An outcome, she was pleased to note, came attached to a bleeding nose and a look of shocked pain in his tiny eyes.

"No thanks," she said, to a sudden and cavernous silence among the recruits. "I think I've got the hang of it."

Cassian stepped forward, his arms folded. "Take that as a lesson not to underestimate the people you come up against," he said, and his gaze swept the group, alighting deliberately on Brooks. "No matter how small."

His words in clear and obvious support were appreciated (albeit non-essential), but he'd staged the situation to deliberately give Jyn the chance to demonstrate — in the face of almost universal skepticism — why underestimating her was a tremendously stupid idea, and she wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. Still, the growing smile on Cassian's face and a silent nod of approval when their eyes locked by accident, like they had a secret, sent a thrill up Jyn's spine.

Unlike the feeling of hope earlier that morning, this one was a little bit harder to pin down. Not that it mattered.

It wouldn't happen again.

* * *

Jyn weighed a handgun in the palm of her hand. "Cheap," she said, and let it drop back onto the table. "The firing pin jams more often than it lands a shot. Send anyone into the field with this, and you're giving them the death sentence. The Germans make a cheap standard-issue better."

They were in one of the interior firing ranges, a room with four sturdy walls of concrete and a series of faceless sack dummies lined up against the walls, each bearing signs of having been torn — with the kind of aim that ranged from sloppy to skilled — and sewed back up again after the fact.

"Here, try this one," Cassian said, pulling the gun from his own belt and holding it grip-first towards her.

The loudspeaker horn at the corner of the room clicked. "Oh, don't encourage her, Cassian," came a disinterested drawl. "You're spoiling the girl."

They both ignored him. "Suppressor?" Jyn said, turning it over. The pistol was well-maintained, despite having seen some use. That was in line with Cassian's image — meticulous to a fault, keeping his weapons in the condition he demanded of himself — precise, and always in order.

"You've used one before?" Cassian asked.

"Stolen some of them," she said casually, detaching the magazine and checking the base for scuffing. "I like to know what I'm selling."

The horn clicked again. "Were the bodies you stole them from conscious, unconscious, or stone dead?" came the question, attached to deadly sarcasm.

Cassian coughed into his hand, clearly suppressing a laugh. "You'll need to pass tests for disassembling and assembling any weapons you're given — English, French, even German. Using stolen guns confuses the enemy, even better than sanitized ones."

 _Click_. " _Sanitized_ means no markings and country of origin," Kay said, somewhat unnecessarily. "Just on the off-chance that you're taking notes, which you most _certainly_ should be."

"How much trouble will I be in if I shoot down that horn?" Jyn inquired.

Undeceived by her deliberate nonchalance, Cassian hastily retrieved his gun and fitted it back onto his belt. "Standard gear," he continued, gesturing at the weapons laid out on the table. "Knife, grenade, handgun. Sometimes we get crossbows, but that depends on the mission."

 _Click_. "Let me guess, you've stolen those too?"

Jyn had already snatched up one of the guns when Cassian's hand closed around her wrist and gently — but firmly — dragged it back towards her side. "Easy," he said. "Controlling your temper's also part of the training."

"Lucky for _him_ ," Jyn muttered, shooting a glare at the horn as she did.

Cassian patted her shoulder in a way that was probably meant to be reassuring. "Come on, you'll feel better once you've shot something," he said. "Time to show us what you can do."

* * *

"I'm not entirely confident that this is one of your better ideas," Kay said, while Cassian wound the handle on one of the winches. Three in all, and the wires were each attached to a weighted dummy set to swing at Jyn, fast. "The girl has a _gun_."

"Do I need to explain the concept of target practice to you, Kay?" Cassian answered. "Jane can't shoot at the targets without something to shoot _with_."

"A rubber band and a pebble always worked quite well for my childhood compatriots," Kay said sniffily. "What _you're_ doing is betting our collective existence on a pane of glass and the unlikelihood that Jyn Erso will want to use this chance to put a bullet between my eyes."

Cassian rapped on the pane of bulletproof glass, laughing again at Kay's tendency to over-inflate his concerns. "Then maybe you should have been nicer to her," he said. "It's not my fault that all you two seem capable of doing is taking shots at each other."

Kay looked offended. "It's _wartime_ , Cassian. Would you deny me one of the few pleasures left in my life?"

Cassian shook his head in exasperation and switched on the loudspeaker. "Jane, are you ready?"

She turned towards the glass. " _Jyn_ ," she answered.

Kay pointed, as though it demonstrated his argument. "See? What a thoroughly unpleasant girl."

Cassian lifted his thumb off the switch. "Kay, you know as well as I do that you only poke fun at the people you like, so unless you want me to _tell_ her that —"

" _No_ ," Kay said, horrified.

"—then let us finish this exercise in peace, all right?"

Kay narrowed his eyes, but the silence was answer enough. Cassian went back to the speaker. "This is to train you to shoot at moving targets," he explained. "They'll be coming at you fast, and on different sides, so you'll have to think quickly."

Jyn checked her gun again, the heavier Browning model as opposed to the streamlined pistol he used (he'd already made a mental note to get her assigned the same one). "Understood," she said. "And tell Kay to shut up, would you?"

Cassian glanced at his friend. "She's not wrong."

"Whose side are you on, _really_?"

Cassian bit back another laugh, an impulse he didn't quite remember having to fight as hard to control before Jyn had arrived at the camp. But that didn't matter now. "Starting in three, two —"

In a single, fluid motion that took him by surprise, Jyn raised the gun to shoulder level, her legs firmly planted, eyes sharpened and ready for any sign of movement.

The file mentioned that she'd been affiliated with some of the best names in guerrilla tactics — Saul Guerra, for one — which implied a certain level of skill, but the gaps in their intelligence hadn't specified the precise degree.

Cassian was interested in finding out.

"— _one_."

He sent the first winch spinning, and the dummy at Jyn's back went flying towards her. Sensing the motion, she whirled and fired two shots — one at chest-height, the other roughly where the head was, and turned easily out of its swing trajectory, firing off another one-handed shot into its back as it went. All without breaking the same measured calm.

Cassian was ready to challenge that composure, and he sent the last two going at the same time. They were on opposing sides of the room, and instead of making the mistake of firing at one after the other, Jyn dropped on one knee and sent off twin shots that severed the wires attached to the dummies. The weighted sacks spilled onto the smooth floor, and she emptied the rest of her bullets into them before looking up.

The empty magazine hit the ground, discharged from her gun.

"So," she said, "do I pass?"

Jyn's breathing was faster than before, and even though she was still narrow-framed and visibly tiny compared to the other agents on the base, she seemed taller to Cassian, like maybe he hadn't been looking close enough at the start. She was different elsewhere too; there was something ineffable that crackled off her like static electricity when she was primed for a fight, something he couldn't help but notice.

He wouldn't get bored studying her — that he was sure of.

"I'm not sure I like this," Kay said.

Cassian didn't reply, because he of all people knew he couldn't say how much he did.

* * *

Jyn reached up to adjust the flashlight between her teeth and went back to scratching with the pencil. She was wrapped in a thick coat and sitting on the steps of one of the teaching buildings, about the furthest place anyone would wander into at the time of evening when dinner smells wafted tantalizingly from the canteen. The thin and cheap yellow paper she was using for decryption practice rustled from a combination of the nighttime breeze and the use of her raised legs as a writing surface.

A bitten (and very chilled) apple sat on a napkin beside her water canteen — probably frozen stiff by now. Fruit and water for dinner, the price of not letting Kay know that she was spending extra time on his lessons.

The classroom setting didn't help for someone like Jyn, who'd spent more time causing trouble than making any genuine effort at staying inside a school building. As her _de facto_ guardian, Saul Guerra hadn't set much store by the detailed recitations of historical battles or dead kings, preferring instead to make sure she knew her languages, arithmetic and the useful sciences — like how to make smoke billow out of a can, for instance — rather than a more by-the-books curriculum suited for girls her age.

Unfortunately, _by-the-books_ was more or less Kay's pseudonym, and after Jyn's first (somewhat contentious) class, he'd already hinted three times at his intention to hold her back out of nothing more than a desire to be vindictive, if she so much as missed a point off the next test. Granted, Jyn wasn't one to succumb to intimidation, and she knew that if she appealed to Cassian, he'd be fair. Unfortunately, it was a quality that went hand in hand with straight-laced firmness, a lack of interest in breaking any kind of rules, and being willing to return her probing questions with ones of his own.

And there was a part of her who didn't want to _owe_ him anything. Not because she thought he might hold it over her head, but just because she didn't want to. _Her_ , not him.

Which explained her current situation, skipping dinner and making use of the time before curfew to get some studying done, away from prying eyes. She knew she'd fall asleep in her bed if she studied anywhere in proximity to it, and the cold — while inconvenient — made sure she'd stay alert, if not entirely (as Kay would say) _chuffed_.

Jyn was just scratching the side of her head with a pencil when she heard footsteps crunching in the frozen grass. "There you are," said a voice.

She dropped the flashlight and caught it with one hand, shining it without mercy at the person who was about to make the biggest mistake of his life if he tried to attack her.

But the person who brought an arm up to shield his eyes wasn't one of the recruits.

"Cassian," she said, lowering the glaring beam, but only slightly. "I'm not doing anything wrong."

He was still blinking hard because of the light. "I know you're not," he said, while she seized his moment of distraction to scan him for anything objectionable. Apart from a thermos and two cups, there didn't seem to be much in the way of gear. "I saw that no one had finished all the stew in the canteen, so you must not have had time to eat."

The notes in her hand were too obvious to shove out of sight, and Cassian looked hard at them. "Is Kay adding extra assignments?" he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. "I thought I talked him out of it."

Jyn shuffled her papers sheepishly. "No," she said, shifting her arms to hide her handwriting from Cassian as he sat down beside her on the steps. "I was just doing some work on my own."

Cassian looked a little surprised. "Oh," he said. "Is the class giving you trouble?"

" _No_ ," Jyn answered, hastily. "I — just have high standards."

She should have gone for a more believable excuse, evident in how Cassian's forehead creased momentarily, and he rubbed a hand across his mouth like he'd been about to laugh. "Good," he said, unscrewing the top of the thermos. "That means you can take a break for dinner."

The smell of stew made Jyn's insides twist in envy, and she pushed her elbows firmly against her stomach to stave off any embarrassing noises. "You don't have to eat with me," she said. "It's cold out, and I'm almost done, and you're —"

"—trying to do something nice to make up for the way I acted on the plane," Cassian said. "I was too blunt. I'm sorry, I should have —"

"—found a nicer way to say that you've been given full authorization to kill me?" Jyn finished for him. "Don't worry, I understand. You're just following orders, soldier."

She was still trying (out of some dogged, stubborn drive she couldn't quite understand) to push Cassian in the other direction, but he didn't seem to be going anywhere. On the contrary, he'd started on a cup of stew like he meant to stay there, leaving the other sitting out for her.

"I said those things to you because I'm used to being careful, but I've been thinking about what you told me — about trust." He was looking at his cup, his gloved hands wrapped around the metal. "You're right that it goes both ways, and you're going to be with us for a while, so maybe…I should try doing things differently. Starting with this."

Cassian looked up, waiting, expectant.

Earnestness could be faked by an experienced liar, much less a skilled Resistance officer with a record of covert activity, which was precisely Jyn's first thought. But there was no reason for him to be in the cold with her, making amends for something he'd clearly said in his capacity as her commanding officer, not when he knew that she held identically pragmatic views on the matter of collaboration. The mission was to find her father — unrelated to the status of friendship, and whether or not they liked each other.

After a moment of silence, Jyn pushed the pencil behind her ear and reached over to pour herself some stew. "I wouldn't make promises you can't keep, Captain Andor," she said mock-solemnly. "It'll take a lot to fix that faulty trust habit of yours."

She was taking a leaf from him and being playful, and the corner of Cassian's eyes crinkled when he smiled.

The stew was hot and thick and better than anything she'd ever tasted — though she told herself that probably had more to do with the chill than the company. They drank in silence for a few minutes before Jyn finally gave into the part of her conscience that had been nagging at her for the last eight or so hours. "Thank you," she said. "For this morning."

Another thing she was learning about Cassian: he didn't use words unnecessarily. His response was a small shake of his head, as though to say _it was nothing_ , and they both went back to looking up at the sky. They were better at being in the outdoors together, broad open spaces, like that morning on the way to her training, as though the underlying tensions and strength of their personalities needed the extra space to coexist in peace. As far as people to be sitting side by side with, saying nothing because nothing needed to be said, not really — Jyn could admit to herself that Cassian Andor wasn't the worst companion under those circumstances.

It was a good night, high and cold and clear. Jyn hadn't spent much time gazing at stars, being constantly on the move and hiding who she really was had left very little room for that, but in her heart of hearts, she was still Galen Erso's daughter.

 _My little stardust_ , he'd called her.

Acting on a sudden, strong impulse, Jyn reached past the folds of her coat and pulled out the necklace, allowing it to swing lightly from the frayed leather cord. The movement and the glow had already caught Cassian's eye, and Jyn stared at it for a second too, wondering if she'd lost her mind, or if she was going soft, forgetting the principle of distance she'd built up over a near-lifetime of not knowing who to trust.

But what could it hurt?

Cassian listened to her, so maybe it was her turn to give — just a little.

"It was my mother's," she said, the words tumbling out like she was afraid she'd let herself stop. "My father gave it to her a year after they met, and she wore it until the day she died."

Cassian had leaned a little closer to see the crystal, but he seemed to know better than to ask if he could touch it. "I've never seen a stone like it before."

Jyn ran her fingers over the silky surface again, imagining that it had long-since been rubbed smooth by her mother doing the exact same thing. "I think my father found it and shaped it himself."

"I can't decide if it looks better at night or during the day," he said, finally. "But it's beautiful. Your father must have loved your mother very much, to give her a gift like this."

Jyn's throat felt suddenly tight, and her attempt at answering him only resulted in a husky, wordless sound. If Cassian noticed, he didn't comment, and Jyn tucked the crystal away again, painstakingly careful as always, a secret piece of her heart meant to be kept close.

Another pause stretched itself into an easy silence, and Jyn watched the stars until she could feel her eyes sting from the cold, but she wanted to take them in, the millions of fiery, blazing hearts and trails of stardust too far for her to see.

"So, day one," Cassian said, in a hushed voice. He'd leaned back, resting his weight on his elbows to get a better view of the sky.

Jyn nodded slowly at the stars. "Not a bad start at all, Captain."

And she meant it.

* * *

 **Notes: **

**Glad to see you guys are mostly enjoying Kay. Sometimes I wonder if I've made him a smidge too mean, but his lines are so fuuuuuun.**  
 **I think the trio will be shipping out soon, I don't see them staying in the training camp beyond the next chapter, so hopefully we'll get a change of scenery soon.**  
 **Side note: how would people feel about the appearance of a certain American smuggler called Han Solo? I mean, Europe's at war, but there's still business to be done in the gray areas.**


	4. A Spot of Trouble

**A Spot of Trouble**

Cassian drew the razor blade slowly down the side of his cheek. There was no doing it quickly — not unless he wanted to risk losing an ear or an inconvenient scar — so being able to shave like this was an anomaly he reserved for times when he wasn't being sent on a mission.

Apart from a comfortable bed, hot meals and the relative security of an army barrack, being confined to the Inverness camp for the last four weeks meant that he'd been able to slow his pace, take something of a break from the chaos and confusion of a covert operation in the heart of German power.

Which wasn't to say that he wasn't still on assignment.

 _Make her trust you. You've done it before._

Cassian cleaned the blade against the rough towel draped over his shoulder, but he hesitated, razor in hand, staring at his reflection.

There were days when he found himself unable to look past the unseen, the invisible record of kills and untruths and wrongs he'd wracked up in the name of ending a war. When all he could think was that this — _this_ was the face of a liar, a saboteur, sometimes-assassin, and now: a false friend.

Any successful mission was cause for pride, given all that the Allies were facing. But Cassian couldn't in good conscience say that he was proud of this particular service he'd done the cause. Draven wanted bi-weekly reports on Jyn's progress, not just in training (which had more or less progressed at the expected speed), but Cassian's attempts to crack the hard exterior shell that Jyn Erso had built up over a lifetime of trusting no one but herself.

Which wasn't to say that he'd been completely successful. Jyn still kept her distance, was inclined to bring her walls up at the mercurial shifts in their conversations, to shield her eyes and hide her thoughts. But Cassian knew how to read people, and ever since Jyn had told him about the crystal she wore around her neck, he'd detected a gradual, almost imperceptible change in their interactions.

She wasn't constantly trying to probe him for information, the way she had when she'd first arrived, as though he was a threat and dealing with him required as much of the upper hand as possible. She let him see moments of vulnerability: inevitable scrapes and cuts sustained from the grueling training in the mountains, and the evenings spent in his private office (loaned out for the purpose), because she wanted to work twice as hard than she ever wanted Kay to hear about.

For Jyn, that was a measure of trust. A feral animal wouldn't let another see its wounds — Cassian knew that firsthand. Battlefield instincts powered Jyn, no question about it, fight-or-flight instincts drawn even closer to the surface than anyone else he'd seen before. Dangerous and unyielding and all the more compelling for it.

More than that, Cassian was beginning to see her hunger. Not the appetite that Kay was constantly complaining about, but a kind of visceral _need_ , elemental and nearly irrepressible. Now and then he caught glimpses of it behind Jyn's eyes, in the stubborn set of her shoulders, the flash of _something_ — like the electric shock from a fleeting, triggered memory — when she was caught by a seemingly innocuous scene.

A picture of a lone child. Two, three figures disappearing into the snow, without a backward glance. A plane taking off and vanishing into the sky. Pieces of a puzzle, and Cassian had them in his hands, but in many ways, Jyn Erso was still as much an enigma to him as she'd been the day they met.

In a way, Cassian was glad. Dismantling the mystery of Jyn Erso would mean that he'd succeeded — he'd succeeded at being Captain Andor, intelligence officer and recruitment for the Resistance. Not Cassian Andor, the person, and someone Jyn might come to see as a friend.

Then again, Cassian hadn't been himself for a long, long time. Not since the wars, one after the other, and cause after cause that seemed to demand he chip away at the pieces of himself in service of something greater.

He flinched at a prick of pain, and realized — belatedly — that he'd cut himself on his last stroke. Running water into the sink, he pressed the towel to the nick on his chin and cleaned off the last traces of soap from his face.

While steam fogged up the small mirror mounted into the wall cabinet, Cassian washed off the straight razor and left it on the side of the sink to dry. The blade gleamed, and he smiled, darkly.

Secrets had a way of coming out, one way or the other. Maybe Jyn's initiation gift ought to have been a razor — because he had no doubt that a cut on the chin was on the easy end of what she'd do to him if she ever discovered his mission. Mixed motives and blurred lines between genuine wants and following orders.

Like that night he'd approached her under the stars.

There was a knock on the door, and Cassian quickly twisted the tap to cut off the flow of water. "Yes?" he said.

"It's me," said Kay, succinct as ever. "The General wants a word."

Cassian breathed out, slow and deep. Then he slid the towel from his shoulder and left it on the rim of the sink. "I'll be there in a minute."

* * *

Jyn Erso was minding her own business. They'd just reported back from a training exercise out in the hills, another few hours of trudging through muddy obstacle courses in hostile terrain with a pack strapped to her back and a gun against her belly.

Her muscles were singing with fatigue, and after cleaning out her muddy gear and setting it to dry in the habitual spot, she found a place to sit on the fringe of the exercise yard, using the time to take stock of her injuries of the day. There was a fresh scratch on the back of her hand and a half-healed scab further up her arm, hidden by her sleeve, an older one on her thigh…only a few of many she'd acquired over the last four weeks, part and parcel of running (literally) through training at almost twice the pace of most recruits.

Four weeks. Jyn reached up, running her fingers through her hair. It was damp with sweat and moisture from the trees, and would probably dislodge a treasure trove of twigs and leaves when she unfastened and unbraided it for a wash.

Jyn's fingers knotted themselves into a fist against her head. Four weeks of nothing but working herself to exhaustion, all because she was meant to be in the field, helping to find her father. That had been the promise, the deal with the so-called Devil.

The Devil was taking his own sweet time to make good on their agreement.

There were days when the pacing beast lurking in the pit of her stomach went into hibernation. Times when Jyn felt that despite being no closer to finding her father, it didn't hurt as much as she thought she would. It came from not minding the steady meals (with the added benefit of being hot) and the same bed to sleep in every night. Water to wash when she wanted it, not having to hear the wail of the air-raid sirens and feel the shudder of four walls around her threatening to give way…

But it came at the cost of being tied down. Being painfully aware — even more than usual — of the part of her that stayed restless, counted the passing days with impatience, who watched birds take wing with envy, watched the hawk spiral from the tree with a cry of freedom because she wanted to be in the high, clear air without anything holding her down.

 _That_ was Jyn Erso, not a recruit-in-training for a spy programme, who kept her head down and did as instructed, no agenda, in it for King and Country.

A part of her wished it could be that simple. Maybe even the ability to play the part of a daughter out of her mind with worry over where her father might be. Not a young woman with a burning desire to find the man who had loved her, but also betrayed her — who'd decided that _de facto_ abandonment of a child might be reasoned into sounding anything like protection. She loved him — still — and wanted to find him, but it would be with an inseparable kernel of bitterness in her heart, a piece she couldn't cut away without destroying herself too.

The contradictions had been with Jyn all her life, but at least she'd been able to outrun them by staying busy, by focusing on survival.

She'd been cooped up for weeks, and now the irreconcilable differences were tearing at her from the inside.

Her thoughts were abruptly cut off by something heavy thudding into her shoulder. She looked over: a mud-caked boot.

Two shadows loomed over her. " _Traitre_ ," one of them said.

French, from somewhere in Brittany by the accent. She'd heard that was where Saul's faction had taken up since the French surrender. She wondered if he knew Saul Guerra.

She wondered if he'd heard.

Jyn flicked the mud from her sleeve with her fingers, but didn't answer. It was better — either they walked away, or escalated until they got the reaction they wanted.

"Answer him," said the other, in English this time. "Traitor."

A shiver of something unseen rippled through the exercise yard, more than murmurs, but like a scent only animals could catch. Like they'd scented blood.

Jyn's eyes traveled slowly around her environment. The others would watch, but they wouldn't help. She didn't know them well enough for that, and she'd preferred it that way. Fear and distance worked better, rather than waste mutual time with the charade that they were anything but spies doing a soldier's work.

The show with Jack Brooks — thanks to his ape-sized build and ability to whine about a broken nose — had staved off a confrontation, but an inevitable one. She'd let herself become a mystery, something to distrust, an outlier in the ranks filled with conformity. Whispers were bound to circulate, and now they knew.

Jyn got to her feet as the Frenchman took a step closer, clearly spoiling for a fight. " _Vous êtes la fille de Galen Erso._ "

It was an accusation, and Jyn's hands balled themselves reflexively into fists. Same as a hundred other fights before, except for some reason, she found herself thinking about Cassian, more specifically, what he might say.

 _Don't look for trouble. That's not why you're here._

She gave her head a jerk, like it was to swat away a troublesome insect. This wasn't _her_ fight, she was just along for the ride.

In the face of her stone-faced silence, the Frenchman's mouth moved in the beginnings of a profanity, but Jyn didn't hear him finish his insult. She was watching for the first proverbial shot, and when his arm moved, she dodged the swing of his fist, coming back up with a smile.

 _Good_. She'd been getting bored anyway.

* * *

General Draven looked up from his files when he walked in. "Ah, Cassian," he said, gesturing to the chair. "Good."

The room was surprisingly dark, the air close and smoky with cigar tobacco, a sign that the General had been thinking hard.

Cassian shut the door behind him, leaving only the lamp on the desk as a source of light. "You wanted to see me."

"I did." Draven rose to his feet. "There's been a development in F-section. The French want a push to unify the various Resistance groups — long overdue, if you ask me — but we're encountering some problems."

"Saul Guerra," Cassian guessed. "He refused."

"And practically sent the messenger back to us in pieces." Draven looked like he had something unpleasant in his mouth. "He's a fanatic, and the ones that haven't agreed to unification say they won't unless he does. Guerra'll be the death of all of us unless he's brought to heel — under De Gaulle, or otherwise."

Cassian grasped the word _otherwise_ as the first order of concern. "If we assassinate a leader of a prominent anti-German faction, we can wave any chance of a united French Resistance goodbye. None of the others will yield, and they'll tear each other apart from the inside. Saul Guerra needs to _lead_ , not die from an assassin's bullet."

Draven gave him a sharp look. "Do you think I haven't thought of that?" he snapped.

Cassian inclined his head in apology. He knew General Draven's orderly and methodical mind, and from his point of view, there was nothing admirable about a man like Saul Guerra, who was known for his volatility as well as his harsh tactics against the enemy — a category not defined as clearly as Draven preferred.

Silently, Cassian disagreed. Defiance generated resentment from its opponents, but Saul had backed it up with enough power and influence to make sure he'd remain one of the key players on the board, whichever side ended up winning.

They couldn't afford to lose the man, and Cassian had a feeling the General was about to lay out his strategy as to how.

Draven lowered the hand he'd been pressing against his temple. "I didn't mean to snap at you, boy. You know what it's like talking to these Frenchmen," he said gruffly. " _Organisation, unité_ …it's like speaking Greek at the so-called _leaders._ You'd think the concept of an organized resistance has heretofore never reached French soil."

"Like you say," Cassian suggested, in his calmest tone of voice, "Saul Guerra is the man the undecided factions look to."

"Correct. I assume you already know why I called you in here. I've been reading the progress reports, yours and Major Kay's, and various others. The girl has done better than we could have ever hoped — and now seems a good a time as any to test those results under fire."

"So to speak," Cassian said, before he could quite stop himself.

Draven barked a short laugh, like he'd made a joke. "Not where you're going. Saul Guerra's turned Nantes into a war zone — car bombs, sabotage — they've put the Vichy government and the German presence on edge. Word is the Germans plan to send in reinforcements to make sure any resistance is put down, if things don't start to change soon."

"With all due respect, General, you seem to be betting a lot on Saul Guerra remembering a girl he hasn't seen for years."

"By all accounts, Guerra raised her — laid the groundwork for the soldier you've been training for the last month," Draven answered. "And Miss Erso's not exactly a forgettable presence, is she?"

Cassian carefully sidestepped the last question. "You've left out one thing. Jyn hasn't been forthcoming with how she ended up separated from Guerra and his fighters, but I would guess that the separation wasn't a pleasant one. Putting them face to face might not be the best idea — given the situation in Nantes."

"Nevertheless, it's a risk we'll have to take if we're to have a chance at winning this war," Draven said. "You know that France is lost to us — for _good_ — without a strong underground network. There's already talk of reprisals because of Guerra's hand in causing German casualties. They'll make the streets run red with French blood, and that won't help us in the least. We can't have in-fighting, and we can't have Saul Guerra turning French sentiment against us."

Cassian sat in silence, measuring his words, weighing the costs and the good that might come out of it. But even he couldn't see any way out of the situation. Jyn was the only one within reach who had a personal connection to Saul Guerra — a man as elusive as he was difficult. He wasn't going to listen to anyone else, if at all.

"You're not trying to protect this girl, are you?" Draven questioned. "That's not why she was brought here. She's meant to face heavy fire."

"No," Cassian said, with a shrug. "Of course not. I was considering our options for entering the city. It'll be on high-alert, and three new faces won't blend in so easily."

Draven scoffed, clearly dismissing the obstacle. "You've made it through worse," he said. "Surely you have a contact somewhere who can help you out. Wasn't there an American? The one you used to get out of Warsaw?"

Cassian paused visibly at the thought. " _Him_?" he said.

Draven didn't look surprised. "Why not? I read your report — experienced, impeccable French, and none too bothered by President Roosevelt's ban on American citizens dealing in warring states. He's perfect for the job."

"He smuggles art out of German hands," Cassian said, striving for neutrality despite his personal preference veering towards avoiding the smuggler altogether. "He also overcharges for F-section agents. Extravagantly."

"We'll pay him," Draven said with a shrug. "What matters is whether he'll get you into Nantes to meet with Guerra. From there on out, we have existing operatives in the city to make sure you'll get there in one piece. In theory, anyway."

Cassian had worked with Americans before. Friendly, big presences, and incredibly keen to stress their neutrality — whether or not they had a figurative gun in their hand. This one fell slightly short in the first area, overcompensated in the second, and fluctuated in the third, depending on the factor of financial remuneration. Openly profiteering, and…arrogant. Spark and tinder, respectively.

And if Cassian was being perfectly honest with himself, none of the above factors would have bothered him as much if Jyn hadn't been coming with him on the mission. The thought gave him pause, demanded analysis and rationalization, but the General was eyeing him already, waiting for his answer. So Cassian put the matter to one side, for now.

"He's reckless," he said, finally. "And I'm not sure if he can be trusted."

Draven flashed him a challenging look. "You've been playing the game long enough. Can _anyone_ be truly trusted?"

In the absence of anything more he _could_ say, Cassian forced a smile, acknowledging defeat. "I'll let Jyn know."

"Bring her to the interview room. She's passed all the necessary tests — except mine. It's about time I met the infamous Miss Erso."

 _Funny_ , Cassian thought. _Jyn would say the exact same thing about you, General_.

* * *

Jyn had blood on her knuckles, but it wasn't hers. Mostly not, anyway. She hadn't had the time to check.

In the absence of knowing their names, she'd named them Winston and George in her head — Prime Minister and King of England, respectively. Both men who ought to have been proud of the cadets their special operations unit was churning out, even more so if she managed to knock them out of the proverbial ring.

All she needed was time.

The exercise yard had started out with ten or so bystanders, but that number had at least doubled since then, and now it felt like the arena around a gladiator match, encouragement and jeering if she cared to listen. Excitement was thin on the ground in a camp situated at the heart of the remote Scottish Highlands, and word traveled fast that Jyn Erso had gotten herself in a fight with two angry recruits.

Who were both circling her like restless lions, and her head turned from left to right, alert to see which one would move first, or — and this would be unexpectedly smart — if they had the brains to coordinate their attacks. Winston was the burlier one, and he barreled forward with his weight pushed low, meant to knock her straight off her feet. A lifetime of fighting bigger and physically more imposing opponents had left Jyn with a veritable arsenal of tricks and maneuvers to make up for the shortfall. She was gone from her spot in a flash, rolling out of the way and behind to seize the moment where he hesitated, meeting no resistance where he'd expected a collision. Big targets tended to go off-balance easily, and it was for the aforementioned purpose that she swung a kick behind his knees. He fell backwards into the yard with a solid crash, and she moved onto George.

He came at her faster than she'd been expecting, and he slammed into her like a train car hurtling at full speed. He'd grabbed her around the middle, hauling her straight off her feet and into one of the columns flanking the square. The impact forced all the air out of her lungs in one explosive gasp, but Jyn — out of breath but still fighting — raised her elbows and drove it down towards the back of his bent neck. She knew firsthand that a blow to the neck could daze, and she continued to ram it into the same spot, over and over until his grip loosened, and she brought her knee up to crack him in the chest.

He dropped her with a strangled gasp, choking for breath, and Jyn backed into the center of the square again — winded, her sides aching, but still on her feet.

"Had enough yet?" she said breathlessly, and a shout went up from the watching crowd.

This time they both came at her, and Jyn swore the world went red for just a second. It wasn't like shutting her eyes and experiencing a brief absence of sight, it was more like everything racing twice as fast like a film being spun too fast on a projector. Jyn ducked under arms and dove around legs, only dimly aware of her hurts and protesting bones, because all she wanted to do was make sure she left them unconscious in the dust.

She caught someone's wrist and whipped her forearm into a throat, dropped to one knee and swept her legs sideways to knock someone straight off their feet, blocked a crushing kick to her ribs, drew her fist back to swing again —

Fingers wrapped around her forearm and jerked it back, none too gently either. " _Jyn!_ " someone shouted, and Jyn felt the roaring in her ears recede slightly, along with a simultaneous jolt from realizing that it wasn't the first time her name had been called.

Cassian stared at her like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"Ca—" It was incredibly hard to find the words when her instincts had taken the pilot's seat, and in the absence of something more concrete, Jyn wrenched her arm from his grip and half-turned towards the two cadets — one on his knees, the other still trying to get to her, only blocked by someone vaguely familiar in a command uniform.

She'd gotten free, and seeing this, the cadet tried to dodge around his roadblock for the purposes of continuing their scrap — but he dropped without warning, half-sprawled on his hands and feet with Kay's hand digging into the join between neck and shoulder.

In Jyn's moment of unguarded surprise, Cassian grabbed the back of her shirt and clamped his arm around her middle, hauling her backwards — disregarding protest — until they were at a safer distance away from her opponents.

" _Jyn_ ," he grunted, close to her ear. "That's enough."

It very much was _not_ , and Jyn didn't drop her efforts to get free of his arms — now both locked around her waist, with the rest of his body mass being utilized as a dead-weight anchor. He'd clearly underestimated her strength the first time, but now it was her turn to realize that his size didn't necessarily mean he didn't have the ability to keep her exactly where she was.

Meanwhile, Kay looked up and around the yard, as though he couldn't hear Winston hissing in pain beside his polished boots. "Anyone still standing in front of me in ten seconds can expect to find themselves recommended for reassignment to a _highly_ undesirable unit in His Majesty's Armed Forces," he said acidly. "Shall we say testing open fields for unexploded mines?"

In the face of a commanding officer's threat, the crowd rapidly began to thin, and Jyn finally regained use of her verbal faculties.

" _Cassian_ ," she burst out, furiously. "I'm not d—"

Cassian didn't seem interested in hearing the rest of her sentence. " _Kay_ ," he said through his teeth. "Help me with her."

Kay whirled immediately and took Jyn's other arm with a no-nonsense expression of firm disapproval, joining Cassian in their forced marching of her away from the scene of the fight. "That's quite enough from you, Miss Erso," he declared. "Any more and we'll have to send them back to their families in pieces — which would be quite a chore to explain, seeing as they aren't yet in enemy territory."

She could taste blood on her upper lip from her nose, and every muscle in her body was still primed for a fight that was unequivocally _not_ finished. But Kay and Cassian weren't cadets-in-training who didn't know how to keep someone like her firmly restrained until disciplinary action, and Jyn's ribs were genuinely starting to hurt.

"I can walk by myself, thanks," she said, seething.

"That's exactly what we're worried about," Cassian answered flatly.

* * *

 **Helloooo. So I've given Cassian a bit of a history with Han Solo in this one, and they don't necessarily like each other a whole lot, but I haven't decided yet. Thanks for adding your responses!  
**

 **Btw, my Tumblr is my username (ChronicOlicity), come say hi if you want :)**


	5. Stardust

**Stardust**

"I can't believe it," said Kay, pacing in front of a row of lockers. "Starting a _brawl_ with two other recruits? Have you lost your mind, Miss Erso?"

Cassian silently held a wet rag out to Jyn, and she dabbed at the dried blood crusted onto her lip. Her nose didn't hurt anymore, but she was half-hunched over because of her ribs — which were aching from being slammed into the pillar. She badly wanted to inch out of her jacket and lift up her vest to take a look, but she'd been the targeted audience for one of Kay's disciplinary speeches before, and exposing herself — even for legitimate medical purposes — wouldn't make him finish talking any faster.

"You won't believe me, but they started it," she said, and Kay raised his eyes to the ceiling.

"Young lady, it doesn't matter _who_ started it —"

"—was I supposed to curl up in a ball and hope they'd stop kicking me?" Jyn interrupted, her arms out by her sides. "I wasn't going to let them kill me just because they called me a _traitor_. Rolling over and playing dead might be what you patriots do, but it's not for me, _thanks_."

"Jyn, you're not on the streets anymore," Cassian said, speaking over Kay's monologue of disapproval. "Defending yourself may be an acceptable instinct to have out there, but you're in training. These are soldiers, and you should have used your head — not your fists — to deal with a situation like this."

" _You_ marched a massive cadet out in front of everyone and told me to punch him on my first day!" Jyn retorted. "How's that any different from what just happened?"

Kay swung around to Cassian. "I _warned_ you about that one."

Cassian waved him aside. "Because that _was_ different. It was a demonstration for a _purpose_ — the least destructive option out of a range of others I considered before I made a choice. What you did just now wasn't _thinking_. It was brawling, plain and simple."

Jyn threw the rag onto the bench and sprang to her feet. "Well, it's what kept me alive," she said, hissing the words into Cassian's face. "I'm _sorry_ if I can't forget who I am with a snap of my fingers."

Cassian returned her glare with one of his own.

"I'm not asking you to forget who you are," he said, in a carefully measured voice that only made her more infuriated, seeing as she was shouting. "I'm asking you to _think_ before you do something rash and impulsive, because _that_ is what's going to keep you alive — if you ever reach the end of your training. You've taken care of yourself so far, before we brought you here. I don't think that was through dumb luck, was it?"

"I'm not sure about that one," Kay said. "She _was_ in a prisoner transport when we found her. Dumb luck's looking rather good right now."

Jyn rolled her eyes. "Don't worry, I get the message — loud and clear. I've been here four weeks, doing exactly what you said —"

"— more like demonstrating that your only special skill is _mouthing off_ ," Kay said, pointedly.

Jyn ignored him. "But apparently that's not enough, because I'll be here in this — middle of _nowhere_ — until the _great_ Captain Andor decides I'm ready to make myself useful!" she finished, and swept him a sarcastic salute. "Loud and clear, sir."

" _Jyn_." Cassian looked like he was trying not to shout back. "The General wants a meeting. That's why Kay and I were looking for you. For your final interview and psychological evaluation before you receive your first official assignment."

Jyn hesitated, as though north had turned to south, black to white. "What?" she said. "There's a mission?"

Kay snorted, about as casual a sound as she'd ever heard him make. "Given your behavior with those two cadets — impulsively beating the stuffing out of them in a blind rage, to be precise — I highly doubt that either of us, or the General, will continue to use present tense in that sentence with regards to you, Miss Erso."

Jyn didn't say anything, because she was thinking, her thoughts hurtling at a breakneck pace. No mission meant staying in the camp as a somewhat hostage — no escape, not because she couldn't, but because it meant she'd never find her father. Or she wouldn't get to him in time, being kept in the dark, not knowing anything —

Her pulse was hammering nauseatingly fast at the possibility of everything slipping away, and maybe she showed it, because something in her face seemed to soften Cassian's anger. "Kay, could you give us a minute, please?" he said. "Tell the General…"

He didn't complete the sentence, but apparently it was enough for Kay to give him a look. "You're _joking_."

Cassian didn't move. Jyn could sense a fierce argument flickering between the two friends without the need for a single word, and she knew it was over when Cassian just repeated: "Please."

Kay shook his head at Jyn like she'd chalked up another demerit in his never-ending list, and he exited the room with a curt slam of the door, clearly off to tell the General something he deeply disapproved of.

A part of her hoped it was a plausible reason to explain why she might be late for the interview.

Another part of her had a bad feeling that Cassian may have finally run out of patience.

Jyn dropped back onto the bench once Kay was out of sight, like all the wind had gone out of her sails. Between the furious sense of wrongness that Cassian of all people had pinned the blame onto her was the nagging sense that maybe — _maybe_ — she should have considered her other options. An ironic instance of hindsight, given that the reason why Jyn had been so edgy and ready for a fight was because she couldn't take being kept in the camp for another day.

Now it seemed like she was about to see an indefinite extension to that _— because_ of said fight. Jyn twisted her fingers into the front of her hair, resisting the urge to yank.

While she stared hard at the floor, Cassian picked up the rag from where it lay on the ground and washed it out in the sink, silently, methodically, before he held it out to her. Like a peace offering. Jyn pressed it to another one of her reopened cuts, mirroring his silence, and Cassian crouched on the floor in front of the bench, so that she didn't have to bend back to look at him.

"What happened?" he asked.

"They found out who I am," Jyn said, in a low voice. "I don't know how, but they did. They called me Galen Erso's daughter."

"And other things," Cassian guessed. "So you fought them."

"He swung a punch, and I fought back," she corrected, because it felt somehow important to her that he knew she hadn't been the one to start the fight. That she hadn't been headstrong and impulsive and lost her temper.

Well, not _as_ headstrong and impulsive. Losing her temper was beyond even internal dispute at this point.

Cassian nodded, digesting the information in his quiet way.

"Are you going to keep me here?" she asked.

It was a long while before he answered, or maybe he just felt like it. "No," he said, and the tightness in her chest released itself. "Galen Erso isn't a name friendly to the people who know what it means. We should have considered the implications of letting you go without an alias more carefully."

Jyn eyed him through her lashes, not entirely sure if it meant he was about to back her in front of everyone else.

"You can handle yourself in a tight spot, that's for sure," Cassian still seemed to be thinking aloud. "So that leaves the impulsiveness and the short temper for me to worry about."

It took her a second to realize that he was talking as though he was about to be her partner during an assignment. Like it was his responsibility to watch her back, and for her to watch his.

"You're — you're not going to —" Jyn found herself grasping for a word that wasn't _abandon_ , because he wouldn't be if he left her in the camp, not really.

"I made you a promise, didn't I?" Cassian said, getting back on his feet. "I like to keep my promises. If anything, this proves that you need me out there with you — to make sure you don't do anything insane."

Jyn experienced a surge of relief mingled with gratitude and warmth all in one heady rush, and she almost — _almost_ — wrapped her arms around Cassian, something absurdly out of character as it was out of place. But she wanted to do something, so she gripped his arm instead, and leaned in. "Thank you," she said, wishing she had the words to say more.

Cassian jerked his head towards the door, not smiling, but close enough to it. "Come on. You're already late."

* * *

The room was starkly lit, electricity humming in the ceiling and the walls like a pulse. Jyn shifted her weight slightly, trying to find a position that wouldn't make the rigid chair press quite so painfully against her bruises. She'd cleaned off the visible signs of dirt and blood (hers or otherwise) but she still felt a vague sense of unease. Maybe it was because she felt watched, and with good reason. The room was set up like a stage, and her audience was behind the pane of mirrored glass to her left.

She wondered if Cassian was there too, observing. The last test, not administered by him, or Kay. Out of their hands, their hard work up for inspection. She wondered if he could see her nerves, and wondered why she cared about their disappointment.

The door opened suddenly and without warning, and an unfamiliar man marched into the room like he was meant to be there. He was tall, she guessed about the same height as Kay, who towered over most of the men in the camp, with a head of rust-colored hair just starting to thin, and a face etched deeply with lines like granite exposed to the elements. "Jyn Erso," he said brusquely, as though it sufficed as a greeting and explanation all at once.

His voice echoed slightly in the closed room.

As soon as he set foot into the space, even before she started to take him in, Jyn had wiped her face of anything except indifference, as though she was observing something vaguely intriguing from afar.

Unfazed by her silence, he laid an open folder onto the steel table between them, but his cool blue stare never left her face. "My name is General Draven, and it is at my say-so that you will be issued the authorization to enter any of our branch's operational zones," he said, like he was an umpire explaining the rules before a match. "You've passed your tests to the satisfaction of your superiors —"

Jyn felt her eyebrow raise itself slightly at the word _superiors_ , but she didn't interrupt.

"— minor incidents of trouble notwithstanding. For all accounts and purposes, we'd be fortunate to have you assisting the cause in F-section, _but._ "

Draven let the word hang, and folded his hands in his lap. "Why are you here?"

"Two men called Cassian Andor and James Kay abducted me from a prisoner transport truck on its way to Germany," she said matter-of-factly, and nearly smiled, imagining Kay's reaction behind the glass in the next room. "They told me I'd go free if I helped them."

Draven's expression didn't change; clearly he wanted a serious answer. "I've seen your record. Escape — especially from a place like this — should have been easy for you. It was perfectly possible for you to bide your time and vanish. Why did you stay?"

Jyn wracked her brain for something more concrete. _To find my father_ was too abstract, too unconvincing. So was the functional reason of being exempted from fugitive status in at least _one_ country. Simplicity to them meant lies, and her feelings regarding Galen Erso were complex, to say the least.

It was like running the back of her fingers across rows and rows of books, each of them containing memories, thoughts, images…Jyn Erso's life contained in an endless room collecting her past and present.

Then, suddenly and without warning, her hand encountered the weight of something different, a thought that she couldn't fully explain, but knew was real.

"I lived in a village with my parents until I was nine," she began. The words didn't come easily at first, because she knew that telling the story would lay herself bare, to the kind of people she preferred to only see the constructed facade of Jyn Erso, not the reality she kept close to herself.

But she needed to be free, and that meant certain sacrifices. Jyn found herself imagining that it was Cassian sitting across from her, and she felt herself ease into a state of dreamy detachment, as though she was watching the scene from afar and telling the story.

It was a house at the foot of green hills, wet after an unseasonal fall of rain. Her mother had told her to run, but Jyn came back, keeping herself hidden — in the instinctive, guilty way a child disobeying her parent would stay out of sight — eventually crawling towards the house and peeking through the grass at what her parents were doing with the strangers who'd arrived at their doorstep.

There'd been a strange man in white, out of place for his lack of color in a village as green and lush as their home, flanked by two other strangers in black. Their faces were blurs from the distance, and there were vague shapes in their hands, long and metal and intricate, like something made from puzzle pieces put together. Jyn didn't focus on what they were holding — or connect the shapes with the small pistol her mother cleaned every week and returned carefully to a cabinet high out of Jyn's reach — because she was trying to hear what her parents were saying.

It was German, more difficult for her ears to pick up than French or English, and a breeze was blowing in from behind, carrying the words even further still. Her mother Lyra stood apart from the rest of the group, her bundle clutched to her chest. Her father was in the middle, between the man in white and his wife, as though he was the bridge between two banks of a river.

Jyn only started to fear her father might be swept away when her mother shouted, and suddenly the bundle dropped away, revealing a pistol — an open threat.

The shapes in the black strangers' hands were pointed towards her mother now, and her father's voice rose slightly, urgent and quietly fierce. The man in white said something, and moved his hand in a small gesture, a flick of contempt.

Jyn held her breath, which was how she never managed to scream when her mother fell, and her face was pressed to the dirt when the second _pop_ of a gunshot echoed in her ears.

 _Run_. _Run now._

So she had, and time had dulled the edges of the scene in her mind, but not the burning aura that surrounded the stranger in white, and his presence, linked inextricably with the end of her mother's life and the loss of her father to the enemy.

"I was hiding in the grass, but I saw everything. I thought the Germans killed both my parents, but they just wanted my father back at work to help them. There was a man there — an officer, a captain — in white, and I think he gave the order for his men to shoot my mother."

She lifted her eyes from the reflective steel table beneath her splayed hand. Draven was watching her, showing no signs of support or condemnation either way, but it only mattered that he was listening. "I don't know who that man is, but he murdered my mother and took my father from me, forced him to build things — _weapons_ — to harm innocent people."

"So you want to intervene," Draven concluded, clipped and cool. "You want to save lives."

Jyn turned her head slightly, not in open disagreement, but to emphasize her point. "If that man's alive, I want to find him," she said. "I'm going to make him answer for what he did to my family — and then I'm going to kill him."

General Draven glanced briefly at the opaque glass, and Jyn latched onto the gesture, her instincts at their sharpest. There was something he wasn't telling her. Maybe he knew who the stranger in white was. Maybe he knew whether or not he was alive.

Which meant that maybe, just maybe, Jyn would have the chance to end him herself.

* * *

Behind a screen of glass, the room of spectators was silent. There were other officers there with them, some instructors, others on par with General Draven in rank — all curious to see Jyn Erso for themselves. They'd been murmuring before, but now all was still, something Cassian chose to think was from being unwillingly impressed by the young girl sitting just a few feet away. Fire and grit, a self-created armor underlying a fierce determination to complete the mission, in pursuit of a goal they could all understand. Wrong, revenge, and justice.

Cassian intercepted a glance from Kay and edged his way through the crowd towards him, from where he'd been observing in the corner.

"That went well," Kay murmured. "Who knew Miss Berserker wasn't the cutthroat street criminal she pretends to be?"

"I did," Cassian said quietly. "And you too."

Kay _hmph_ -ed, but didn't dispute the point. Cassian knew he liked Jyn, for all his irritations and the annoyance she caused him, or he wouldn't have reacted as strongly after discovering she'd been in a fight. "And a show of human emotion too," Kay added, under his breath. "How things _change_."

"Not all things." Cassian patted him lightly on the shoulder. "Out of the three of us, you're still the machine in the group, aren't you, Kay?"

Kay straightened his shoulders even more than they already were, puffing out his chest in response to Cassian teasing him. "And proud of it."

Cassian smiled briefly and went back to watching the interview.

As far as he could tell, Draven looked appeased by Jyn's answers and gave a brief nod, as though satisfying himself that they could continue on to the next stage of the interview. "Miss Erso, I'd like to conduct an exercise in word association. I say a word, and you say the first thing that comes to mind. For example, if I were to say _Officer_ , you might say —"

"— _drone_ ," she said, and smiled.

" _Bugger_ ," Kay breathed, a hand over his eyes.

Cassian wanted to remind Jyn that it wasn't a challenge, not an exam — not really, that there was no reason for her to be braced for an attack. The questions were for the purposes of understanding each agent's motivations, what made them run, fuel or fumes, fire or just sparks.

He already knew Jyn, and she had no reason to be nervous.

In response to Jyn's mild impertinence, Draven gave her a hard look, but she didn't quail beneath his stare. "Let's begin, shall we?" he said curtly. "Country."

"None."

"Identity."

Jyn considered it. "Fluid."

"Home."

A short pause. "Shelter."

Draven tapped his fingertips against his temple, still watching Jyn. "Gun."

"Kill."

"War."

"Loss."

"Traitor." Draven's voice cut.

A hint of a smile there. "Dead."

"Scientist."

She breathed out. "Tool."

"German."

"Danger."

"French."

A shorter pause. "Ambiguous."

"Mother."

Jyn inhaled slightly, as though she'd felt a prick of something sharp. "Protector."

They all knew the next question, even Jyn, but Cassian found himself almost bracing for it.

"Father," Draven said, with an air of finality.

Jyn hesitated — visibly — and Cassian, watching from behind the glass with the others, found himself in awe of her ability to seem completely detached in one second, her eyes faraway and distant, and suddenly snap back to the present with such fierce clarity, enough to give the person across from her pause, even just a second, from realizing that they were suddenly speaking to the real her.

She'd been far away when she answered Draven's questions, but now she was here. Now she was here.

" _Father_ ," Draven repeated, his stare hardened to twin points.

Jyn was unquestionably present now, and she returned Draven's stare with ferocity. "Stardust," she said, in a low voice — but by no means weak.

A thrill traveled the length of Cassian's spine, despite not knowing what she'd meant by _stardust_ , and the mysterious association between the word and her elusive father, because he knew what mattered. That she'd passed.

She was an agent now.

* * *

Jyn's door was open. Apart from the pile of things that weren't really hers sitting on the stripped mattress, she could already have been gone. They'd gotten the gear to her late, probably because of the last-minute nature of the mission she hadn't heard yet, not in full.

She was meant to hear it from her captain, whoever that was. Before, Cassian had spoken as if he already knew it was him, but Jyn didn't want to get her hopes up. General Draven had made it clear that he was in charge, and somehow she doubted — even with her limited experience — that they were allowed to choose their teams for covert operations.

 _If_ Cassian would want her with him in the field. Kay made sense, with his logic and analysis and ability to pretend his spine had been handmade in a German factory, but Jyn was a risk as much as she had the skills to be an asset. Cassian was analytical too, and smart. Maybe the mission would point him another way, and she'd be sent elsewhere, with unfamiliar faces.

Or maybe not.

Again, she preferred not to pin her hopes too highly — it helped to limit the eventual disappointment.

Jyn looked at the clothes she'd been given for any indication as of her eventual destination. There were things meant for rough wear — similar to what she'd had when the Resistance intercepted her — and, unpleasantly, a skirt and blouse, as though she was about to walk into an office for a job. She sincerely hoped the assignment didn't involve waitressing, though it didn't seem unlikely, as some form of behind-the-scenes punishment for putting two cadets in the infirmary. Kay might have even suggested it.

Jyn crumpled the soft material in her hand, noting that the Resistance had even sewn French labels onto the clothes, like they were anticipating a challenge to their authenticity.

The prospect of excitement bothered her less than everything else, and Jyn quickly packed the rest of the gear into her bag, swung the strap over one shoulder, and walked out the door.

Time to go.

* * *

Cassian's room was swept clean, like it had been a hundred times before, left the way he always left it before going on a mission. Even when he was around, the shelves were bare of anything except a few books, no pictures in frames, not even a locked box of letters.

It was easier that way. He kept his room in the officer's quarters bare and impersonal, not just because he preferred it to be so, but he never knew if he'd come back. In his experience, it seemed selfish to leave the person after him the inconvenient task of clearing a stranger's personal effects. He'd done it for others before, ones with no next of kin or friends that they knew of, and there was always a faint twinge of guilt when he set the match to burn what was left of their memory.

As the prospective soldier killed-in-action or missing-but-presumed-dead, Cassian preferred to leave the administrative side of the matter as convenient as he possibly could, even if it was someone he genuinely liked doing the final sweep. It was a short list, comprised mainly of Kay, and he knew his friend wouldn't mind doing it, though he'd pretend to complain. Still, Cassian liked things neat and efficient, as absurd as leaving no memory of himself would probably seem to the average bystander. It rationalized the unknown, reduced the instinctive dread humans had at the thought of death. Thinking about the things that came after helped calm him, made him feel like he was in control.

Cassian shouldered his pack, itself light and clear of anything he didn't need for the mission. Which was getting Jyn to Saul Guerra and braving a war zone in the process, all without drawing hostile attention — German, or _collaborateur_ French.

One last thing. He checked his collar, using his fingers until he got to the hard nub concealed in the lining. It was a pill containing cyanide, capable of killing him in under ten seconds. If caught, it was always the easier way than seeing what the Germans had in store for an enemy spy — stories of their less lucky or more apprehensive comrades added weight to that assumption.

It also wouldn't hurt — much.

He had another one with him today, and he was meant to give it to Jyn before they departed the base, along with the instructions for its (contingent) use.

The sun was bleeding red across the sky when he emerged from the officer's barracks and made his way towards the airfield. The flights into enemy territory needed to be under the cover of darkness, which meant timing their arrival for after nightfall.

The plane they'd be flying in was small and quiet, meant for the similar purpose of avoiding detection. Cassian made his way up the open cargo bay doors and dropped his pack beneath a seat, noting that there was already one on the opposite side of the aisle.

"There you are," Kay said, emerging from the front of the plane. "I thought you were picking up our comrade's penchant for lateness."

"One of these days, you're going to have to use her real name," Cassian warned him good-naturedly. "Can't keep putting off the inevitable."

Kay put a hand to his heart. "How fortunate that we are about to embark on an undercover mission, and that day is yet to come."

Cassian snorted. "Draven briefed you?"

"Oh yes," Kay glanced out the window at the reddish sunset. "I estimate our chances of death at a low sixty-eight percent."

"Charming," said a voice.

Cassian — like Kay — looked around to see that Jyn had made her way into the plane undetected. She looked somewhat surprised to see the two of them, and he realized that no one had told her about the mission — apart from its existence — much less who she was going with.

No, that wasn't right. He'd made it sound more or less like a certainty when he spoke to her, before the interview with Draven.

Maybe Jyn hadn't wanted to believe him quite yet.

"It looks like you'll be saddled with me, then," she said, with an air of someone testing uncertain ground, and it dawned on him that she hadn't wanted to hope, in case she turned out to be mistaken.

"Cassian and I both lost the draw," Kay answered. "I do hope you don't have any weapons in that pack, Miss Erso. I specifically requested that they hold off on providing you with anything more lethal than a spoon."

"You should be scared of what I can do with a spoon," Jyn said. "But I _was_ wondering if the skirt had been your idea."

"I'm always on a mission to civilize," Kay said snippily, and she smiled.

Then her eyes locked with Cassian's, and the smile became something else he couldn't really put into words. "I wasn't lying, you know," he said, sensing what she was thinking. "I knew you'd be coming with me for the mission."

Jyn took a step closer, grasping one of the straps hanging from the hull as though the plane was shaking. "I thought you'd be tired of me by now," she said, in a low voice.

Kay had already gone back to the cockpit. "Oh, _I_ most certainly am," he called.

Cassian gave her a slow smile behind Kay's back, and she returned it. He leaned forward slightly when her lips parted, but never heard what she'd meant to say.

"Captain Andor."

The General was outside the plane. "I'd like a word," he said.

Jyn's face went blank, and Cassian didn't explain as he made his way past her, knowing it wasn't necessary. Captain Andor and Cassian were different people, with different — sometimes opposing — needs and responsibilities.

Once they were outside, Cassian followed the General a short distance away, until they were out of eavesdropping range.

"I take it you and Major Kay are prepared for the mission," said Draven, his hands folded behind his back.

"Yes, sir," Cassian answered, well aware that it was a formality, that the General had pulled him aside for more than just a cursory check.

"The American smuggler is set to meet you after you make the landing in Brittany. He'll be in one of the towns on the outskirts — but you already have the details for that."

"Along with the reminder that he wants payment on the spot," Cassian added.

Draven's mouth twitched in a grudging smile. "He's not a fool. That's a strength and troublesome as hell for us."

There was a pause, and Cassian turned his head slightly to see Jyn going through her pack, more likely than not as an excuse to try and read their lips from the distance. He turned the other way, and found General Draven watching her too.

"Interesting girl," he said. "Troublesome too."

"You cleared her for the mission," Cassian reminded him.

"I did. Saul Guerra matters too much to waste time we don't have," Draven said. "But the interview — the man in white she spoke about — what are the odds of that?"

Cassian glanced at him sharply. "You know who she meant?"

Draven jerked his head. "Not for sure, but the person who reintegrated Galen Erso into the German science division would have had the rank, and a level of familiarity with Erso's work from previous collaboration. That doesn't leave many names."

Cassian stayed silent, a part of him — the spy — wanting to probe for the information like he'd been trained to, dissect it, store it away for when it became useful. But another part of him didn't want to add another secret to the vault, something else he'd have to lie about to her.

"Anyway," Draven said, as though returning to the matter at hand. "That's not the focus of your mission. I'm sure you realize that a unified Resistance will help matters considerably. Saul Guerra must be convinced, one way or another. The outcome will determine whether the girl can be trusted going forward. Watch her, and report back to me. Do you understand?"

Draven's scrutiny normally didn't bother Cassian, but this time, he had to force himself to maintain eye contact. "Understood, General."

"Good. Best of luck. We'll be monitoring your progress from here."

Cassian saluted and walked back the way he'd come. The sun streaked across the airfield in shades of a dying fire, shadows turning blue in the twilight. Jyn looked up when he returned, and Cassian didn't smile, his face wiped clean of emotion.

Kay gave him a nod. Beside him, the pilot who'd be flying them into France was waiting for instructions.

"Move out," said Cassian, and the engines began to roar.


	6. Mission Ready

**Mission Ready**

It was a quarter-hour since they'd made the landing, and rain had been lashing at Cassian's face for slightly less than that. He was going through the checklist in his mind — orderly and methodical in contrast to the creaking branches and tearing chaos brought to them by the weather. Parachutes, buried and hidden on the spot. Their tracks and footsteps would be taken care of by the rain, and the low visibility made it even less likely that they were being followed, if at all.

 _Luck_. They'd just barely out-raced a storm that would have sent them back the other way, all they needed was a little more to reach their stopping point for the night.

Kay was leading the short hike towards their destination, and despite the sheets of rain and sucking mud, his navigational skills remained unflappable. He'd made the trek countless times before, and the last thing a decided Englishman like him would allow was a spot of rain to derail carefully laid plans.

Cassian brought up the rear, keeping pace to make sure he didn't lose sight of them. In front of him, Jyn's head was hooded, bowed against the storm, and he felt a momentary — unnecessary — stab of worry at the dropping temperatures. They could twist an ankle or stumble into a bad fall in the darkness, the pouring rain didn't give them a chill. They needed to reach the house soon.

For the mission, and safety, he reminded himself. Not just because of one person.

Jyn had been in France when they'd found her, so he doubted she needed much of an explanation as to why they weren't trying to find a way to the road, and onward to a town or village. Curfew was worse in areas where Resistance action was active, and based off what he'd heard so far, Saul's agents made _active_ sound like a grievous understatement. Nantes would be on lockdown past nightfall, and he wasn't stupid enough to try and get past a security checkpoint in their current state.

There were no lights in the abandoned property, but Cassian knew they'd reached it when they stumbled into a clearing. All there was left was the short fumble for the front door, and they pushed into the welcome shelter of the old farmhouse.

"What is this?" Jyn's teeth were chattering from the cold, and Cassian — bringing up the rear — yanked the door shut behind them and bolted it.

They were immediately plunged into darkness, not that stumbling around in the rain had been particularly illuminated, but the shutters were closed tight across all the windows, cutting off any sign of outside light and the elements. Cassian felt for his flashlight on the inside of his coat and turned it on. A wan yellow beam spilled between his fingers, streaking across wooden floorboards and a dusty kitchen.

"Safehouse," he explained, touching her briefly on the shoulder as he passed her in the dark. "The owner fled France years ago. Our agents use houses like this all over the country to hide."

"Cassian," Kay said, and he turned to catch the box of matches being tossed his way.

Kay had already lit half the candles on his side of the room, and Cassian hastened to help. It was the only source of warmth they were allowed to have (smoke from a fireplace might alert watchers that the house was inhabited), and he preferred to conserve batteries for situations of genuine need.

Jyn made a noise under her breath that might have been disgruntlement, turning her head from left to right as she surveyed the room. "Even while avoiding detection in enemy territory, the Resistance still sleeps better than most of France," she said.

"Speak for yourself," Kay said sniffily. "This place is an absolute _mess_. When I find out the last team that used this place, I'll have a word with their commanding officer about proper etiquette regarding communal spaces, just you wait."

Jyn snorted. She'd untangled the sodden scarf wrapped around her hair and wrung it out by the door. " _Rather not parachute straight into a patch of lightning_ ," she said pointedly, eyeing Kay while water ran in rivulets from her — and their — soaking clothes. "They should hire you at the BBC. You'd make a fine weatherman."

"Oh, shut up," Kay answered. He was by the worn wireless radio stored in a false bookcase, adjusting the antennae to pick up the signal. "You'll be sleeping on the floor tonight."

Cassian caught Jyn's brief smile as she continued to remove articles of dripping clothing. "All right?" he asked, once the soft sounds of scratching static filled the wooden room.

He hadn't really needed to ask. Despite how cold she had to be, Jyn's face was brighter than he'd seen in weeks, alive with the thrill of being in the field. "More fun than the crawls they made us do back at camp," she answered. "We're lucky we beat the storm."

Cassian reached for the pewter candlestick. "Luck was with us tonight," he said, and walked towards the next room.

The farmhouse was painted plaster on the exterior, overgrown with crawler vines and vegetation from a lack of regular inhabitants, but the insides were flat, low and reasonably watertight, if a little dusty. Apart from the kitchen and entryway they'd come through, there was only one more room off the side, and a barn through the back. Cassian pushed through the painted white door, leaving the candle on a dust-coated piano, pulling sheets from the furniture to set up their beds for the night.

"We'll all have to sleep in the same room," he said, though he didn't get the impression that Jyn cared much, as long as there was a pillow — maybe not even then. "If it was dry, maybe the barn would be a possibility. But tonight it's only an option if you want to drown."

Jyn snorted, holding the candlestick he'd left to the side. She swiped a finger through the dust on the sideboard. "Kay would have made _me_ take the barn," she corrected. "Not that I mind. I've had worse."

"Prison cell?" Cassian guessed.

"Rats, and a corpse," Jyn said detachedly. She was looking at a faded painting on the wall, something old and bleached beyond recognition. "I can sleep just about anywhere. Saul used to s—"

She caught herself, biting back the force of habit, and Cassian waited. "Saul taught you quite a bit, didn't he?"

Jyn rubbed her dust-coated fingers together and finally wiped them on the side of her leg. "Too much," she said, her voice suddenly low and angry. "And not enough."

Cassian opened his mouth to say more, but Kay rapped on the doorframe. He fell silent, vaguely conscious of something almost illicit, now interrupted. "Come along now, you two. Time to discuss the plan."

* * *

The radio was emitting snatches of what sounded like poetry, static, and scattered nonsensical bits of everyday phrases. Or that was the idea, if Jyn hadn't been taught F-section code.

" _Plan unchanged_ ," she read, in Kay's neat handwriting, one line of translation for every line of code. " _Freelancer will rendezvous with R team, noon. Nantes top priority._ "

"R team?" she asked. "What does _R_ stand for?"

For a second, no one answered. In response to her pointed look, Cassian rubbed a smile from his face like something had amused him. "It stands for _Rogue_ ," he said. "Draven thought it would be appropriate, seeing as —"

"—there's a criminal within our ranks," Kay said shortly. "A better designator than _Salesman_ , I should say. Far more exciting."

"I'm flattered," Jyn answered. "I'm assuming _freelancer_ refers to the smuggler we're meeting outside the city."

Kay made a disparaging noise. "More like chronic opportunist," he said. "The world's going to hell and he makes a market for himself by smuggling other people's treasures out of German hands. Americans have the most funny ideas about being helpful."

 _American_. Given Kay's Englishness and Cassian's stiff-backed attitude towards his duties, Jyn should have guessed. But anyone Kay didn't like was automatically someone of interest, and Jyn didn't bother hiding her amusement.

"He's just being funny," Cassian said, though his tone suggested he didn't find it remotely amusing. "I'm sure Kay prefers to know that the Remembrants and Monets of the Paris Louvre are safe in someone's cellar. Even if they're American ones."

Jyn began feeding the piece of paper to one of the candles, watching the translated code shrivel and turn to ash. "Now you're just making me like him."

Kay narrowed his eyes at her. "I wonder why," he said sarcastically.

The subtext seemed to lump smuggling and street theft in the same category, and Cassian made a noise under his breath, whether directed at Jyn or Kay, she couldn't quite tell. Maybe the both of them, to ward off a sniping battle he'd have to arbitrate. "It's a long day tomorrow," he said. "Better get some sleep."

Jyn didn't move, and stayed with her cheek on her hand, gently nudging the curls of powdery gray ash with her fingertips. She sensed Cassian and Kay's looks, the mutual assessments of how likely it was that she might make a run for it in the night, but as a crack of thunder rang out above their heads, they seemed to decide that it wasn't much of a risk. The door to the next room shut with a soft creak, and Jyn was alone.

In reality, Jyn wanted to ward off sleep, where her unconscious mind posed questions she avoided answering in her waking hours. She knew that if she slept now she'd dream of Saul Guerra and the past, out of an instinctive dread of facing the man, after years of feeling something that resembled hatred.

Her father. Yet not quite, never as much as she'd wanted him to be. His mind and devotion always on other, more important causes. Not raising the daughter of his dear friend.

"You abandoned me," she whispered, because it was only meant for her ears.

Her breath made the orange candle flame twist and jump, almost guiltily, or maybe that was how hard she wanted it to be true. She stared hard at the flame, the embodiment of the hard soldier and dreamer with a will of iron. Volatile and powerful as raw flame. "You raised me, and then you abandoned me when I stopped being useful," she said, repeating the words for herself to hear. Maybe to remind herself that she was here for the mission, and the mission alone.

Saul Guerra was never going to be the father she'd lost, and it was past time she reconciled herself to that. Jyn got to her feet and leaned over to blow out the candles, returning the room to shadow.

Then she went.

* * *

Jyn had been right to stave off sleep. It was different, sleeping on a plane or in the corner of a crowded room. Her body knew not to sleep too deeply in those settings, but she wasn't sure if the same rules would apply now.

She lay awake on the low, hard sofa that was just long enough for her to stretch out her legs, listening to Kay and Cassian's breathing. Kay's was like clockwork, thankfully not a snorer, and Cassian was sometimes so quiet that she barely heard him at all. The room wasn't big, and the cold meant that sleeping on opposite sides of the room to satisfy standards of convention that no one really gave a damn about — not really — didn't make practical sense.

Her hair was still in a knot, and it dug into the back of her neck when she lay facing the ceiling, so Jyn turned the other way, lying on her side. Kay was on his back, looking completely unbothered on the floor, also like someone who'd wake — without protest— at the slightest sign of trouble. Nearer to her, maybe just an arm's reach away, was Cassian. He'd turned his face into his arm, as though he didn't want his thoughts to be shown, even in rest. One hand was out of sight, and she didn't doubt that it was in close proximity to a gun, if not curled around the trigger.

Jyn knew because she had a hand resting around the handle of a knife, the only weapon she'd managed to sneak from camp. It was beneath the old cushion she was using as a pillow, and Jyn adjusted her grip on her weapon as she stared at his back, at an invisible point between his slowly rising and falling shoulder blades, until she closed her eyes and let herself drift.

It was a mistake.

* * *

She dreamed of the rusted ship that had taken her across a sea with Saul Guerra, her only friend left in a world that had taken her parents without reason — none she could understand, anyway. He'd stood at her side, even lifted her up so that she could see past the rails and reach for the gulls that flapped alongside the deck.

They'd lived in a hot, dusty place for a while, where Jyn's head was constantly wrapped in a threadbare scarf that smelled of spices and dry grass and earth, but the sun still managed to blaze streaks into her dark hair. Morocco, some smaller towns and villages, traveling, moving. Saul did business shrewd and harsh, resorting to guns and knives without hesitation if things turned sour, a habit she noticed his men carried. They were feral, big cats in a world of fierce predators, and Jyn learned from them. It was the only thing she could have done.

She was ten when he first let her have a gun. Thirteen when he'd let her out into the world on his business, a tiny shape next to the towering lackeys who feared her as much as they feared Saul.

Fifteen when he walked away and left her to survive alone.

Sixteen by the time she realized he was never coming back.

She dreamed of fire, too fierce, too hot. Saul lived in the flames because he could stand it, because it was the only way he knew how to live, but after he'd burned her, all Jyn wanted was to live in the cool dark. The sun was for other people, she'd stay out of the light.

She was weightless in her dream, carried by currents she couldn't control, not consciously. Suddenly she was in a familiar grass field, the same scene she'd witnessed and relived a thousand times before.

Except —

The gun was in her hands. The soldiers' rifles were directed at her. Her father just a few feet away, instead of a field between them.

"Lyra, don't," he said, and she realized who she was in this memory.

With a flash of hate, Jyn swung the gun towards the man in white, but he wore her father's face when she shot, and bullets ripped through her chest like fire — she fell — disintegrating — tearing away —

It was only the beginning of the bad dreams.

* * *

Cassian woke sometime in the middle of the night. It was still dark, as far as he could tell, so he wondered why. Sleeping on the floor didn't bother him, only the absence of a weapon near his hand did. It wasn't the knowledge of an impending mission either, he was used to worse.

So why?

Cassian sat up quietly, the blanket sliding down his front. Kay was a vague shape in the dark, and he could just make out Jyn's small form curled up on the sofa. The coat she'd been using on top of the thin blanket had slid to the floor in the middle of the night, and Cassian picked it up as he stood, intending to return it.

It was only when he got to her side did he realize that Jyn was dreaming. She hadn't slept easily on the plane, but this was worse. She turned on her side, then her face to her hand, fingertips stretching out across the worn cloth, then back again. Breathing shallow and fast. Sweat beaded on her upper lip, the crest of her forehead, the neck of her shirt.

Cassian remembered snatches of advice he'd heard from his mother, and later his sister. They both used to hear his bad dreams and rescue him from their clutches, waking him with a hand on his cheek, smoothing away the tears.

He was wondering what to do when Jyn turned a second time, and the loosened collar of her shirt dislodged the crystal she always kept close. The string slid out to rest on the seat beside her neck, the white crystal gleaming like a star on a moonless night.

How could a stone like that not protect its wearer from bad dreams?

Cassian was almost tempted to pick up the pendant from pure curiosity (there was something about it that felt mysterious, or maybe it owed that to its owner), but he refrained, and draped the coat over her instead.

Jyn tossed again, and Cassian made one of the few ill-thought-through decisions of his life — if impulse counted as a decision.

He gripped her shoulder. "Jyn," he said, with a gentle shake. "Wake up."

She didn't, and he reached without thinking for her face. Whatever she sensed, Jyn's eyes flew open, and she snatched his wrist before he could touch her. Only Cassian's attention wasn't on her fierce grip (surprisingly strong), but her other hand, and the thin knife blade currently hovering just inches from his throat.

It would have put him out of action for the rest of the mission — if not killed him outright. The only thing that saved him was his reflexes, and they both knew it. Jyn was still panting, shoulders heaving like she'd sprinted the length of Brittany and back, and Cassian realized that he'd overestimated the reserve of trust she held towards him, that she was acting out of feral instinct.

He swallowed to clear the obstruction that had risen in his throat. "Easy," he whispered, holding up his hands to calm her. "It's me. You were having a bad dream."

A flicker of recognition, and the knife slipped from her open hand, sinking into the worn cushion beside her leg. Jyn dropped his wrist like it was hot coal, scrambling further away — as far as the sofa permitted, breathing hard. Cassian didn't say anything, because he was focused on the distress in her face, the momentary lapse in the tight control she usually exerted over her privacy.

Jyn ran her hands across her damp cheeks, over her disheveled hair, and clasped the back of her neck, staring at her knees.

"This is why I sleep alone," she said in a low voice.

Without waiting for his response, she slid from the seat and walked out of the room, leaving him staring after her.

She didn't return.

"Cassian."

He hadn't realized Kay was awake too. His friend looked at him with a closed expression, and Cassian knew what he was about to hear. "Be careful," Kay warned, and turned away.

There was nothing else left to say.

Cassian stared at the narrow crack left between door and frame; Jyn hadn't pulled it shut on her way out, left it to swing closed. He stared until his eyes began to hurt, then he got up and followed.

This time he made sure to close the door.

* * *

Jyn shivered in the bare wooden chair, her feet curled up on the seat with her, the necklace cupped between her palms. It was cold in the kitchen, colder than the rest of the unheated house, but she couldn't quite bring herself to go back into the next room.

She told herself that it was nothing to do with Cassian. Because it _had_ nothing to do with him. Knowing him, the gesture had been well-intentioned, that his way of helping a friend suffering from nightmares was to wake them. She wasn't surprised that he was leaving her alone, since most people — not even spy captains — could really expect a near-knife wound to the throat for their trouble.

Jyn chafed at the crystal, rolling it between her icy palms. It had been there since the plane ride, the defensiveness she'd repressed during her training, but now alive and back to top operating form because of Saul Guerra.

Even though she was absorbed in her thoughts, her senses were so jumpy that she looked up when a draft made the candle flame in front of her flicker.

Cassian was standing in front of the closed door, and she watched him like a wary animal as he walked up to the kitchen table and pulled a chair out for himself, not saying a word until he was seated at her side.

"Is it always this bad?" he asked.

Jyn lifted one shoulder. "Everyone has old friends. The bad dreams are mine."

Cassian inclined his head. "I'm sorry for startling you. I had nightmares when I was younger, and my mother, my sister — they used to wake me from my sleep whenever it happened."

Jyn tried to picture a younger Cassian, one with a smooth face, an easy, wide smile and less secrets in his eyes, but found that she couldn't. No less than she could imagine a Jyn Erso who'd let herself be comforted by anyone, against the instinct she'd trained herself never to rely on.

Comfort came from herself, and no one else. Not Saul Guerra, more General than foster father, and her parents — ghosts, and pieces of fragmented memory.

Not Cassian Andor.

In the face of her silence, Cassian leaned over and dug through one of the packs they'd brought until he found something that rattled. Jyn looked up to find him pushing a flask to the center of the table. "We can't risk starting a fire," he said. "So there's no tea."

It was like he was used to the complaint, and Jyn didn't need three guesses to hit on the disgruntled party as Kay, the quintessential Englishman. A reluctant smile crept onto her face, and she unscrewed the top of the flask. Brandy fumes drifted out from the opening, and Jyn lifted it to her lips, feeling the spirit sear its way down her throat and into her stomach.

"I've always hated tea," she said, her voice slightly husky.

Cassian reached for the flask and took a sip, very nearly smiling too. "So have I."

Jyn widened her eyes in warning. "Don't let Kay hear you say that. He'll decide to leave you to my evil influences."

Cassian looked down at his hands, gently swirling the flask he held. "Doesn't sound that bad to me."

She didn't know what to say to it, and he pushed the brandy towards her again. It was nothing to the kind of drinking she'd experienced around Saul's garrison, but then again, she hadn't really been drinking with friends.

 _A_ friend.

"I'm sorry there wasn't time to prepare you," Cassian said, sensing that her thoughts had strayed into the subject of the mission. "I know things didn't end on the best of terms between you and Saul."

Sometimes Cassian had a way of talking as if the person he was speaking to had told him everything there was to know about themselves, as if they'd discussed any and all subjects under the sun. Sometimes it was almost too easy to nod and agree, to let it be true, but Jyn's guard was always alert to it — especially over something that cut as close as Saul.

"No, you don't know," she said quietly. "You'll never understand a man like Saul Guerra."

There was a pause, and she wondered if she'd hurt Cassian with her rebuff. Jyn, still nursing an unhealed wound in her heart, couldn't quite bring herself to apologize for her defensiveness.

She should have known better. "I suppose it's lucky we have you here, then," Cassian said, easily.

Jyn looked at him, saying nothing, then she nodded. "You'll get your meeting with Saul Guerra," she said, thinking of the countless others who'd wished for the same thing, and later regretted it.

A small, bitter smile curled her lips. "Just make sure you can live with the consequences."

* * *

 _My name is Lyra Jeanne Moreau. I am nineteen years old, and I was born in Marseille, to Christian and Jeanne Moreau. They live on Rue de Paradis. I have no brothers or sisters. I went to school in Lycée Saint-Charles. I am here visiting Châteaubriant with Luc Augustin, an old family friend. We will only be staying for the day._

There was a soft thump from the next room, and Jyn paused in her silent recitation of the cover story to look reflexively at the door. The men were awake and getting ready, just as she was. After a second, she went back to what she'd been doing.

Cassian's bag lay open on the table in front of her, thoroughly rifled through in the absence of verbal permission. The contents were assorted but predictably reliable, like he had catalogued each scenario according to probability and prepared accordingly. Jyn looked past the disassembled Sten guns (light but hard to conceal) and the corresponding ammunition, noting — for some reason — that there wasn't anything that might remotely be construed as personal, not even in a side pocket.

Not even a faded picture.

But that was neither here nor there. Jyn had found a thin leather strap amongst the gear and a sheath meant for a knife, and she was currently in the process of securing it to her leg. The mission brief put the odds of close-quarter combat (or combat at all, for that matter) at _low_ , but having a weapon on her was a source of comfort. Especially since she was about to walk into enemy territory in a skirt.

If it were up to her, she'd walk into the out-of-the-way French town wearing her slacks and loose shirt, but the one thing Resistance agents were meant _never_ to do was draw attention, and even Jyn couldn't use her stubbornness to justify exposing her cover. If Kay didn't shoot her for insubordination first.

Cold water dripped onto Jyn's bare knee, sliding soundlessly from her damp hair. She'd washed the twigs and leaves out from the rough parachute landing using a basin of ice water that smelled like woody air and carried a metallic tang of rust from old pipes. It spilled loosely past her cheeks now, a dark, _dark_ brown and came down to just below her shoulders, unevenly curly and slightly bushy even at the best of times. It was heavy by default, and Jyn brushed it impatiently behind one ear. The strap was meant for someone with thicker legs than her — and probably encased in a paratrooper's uniform — which meant a small struggle to stop it from sliding down to her knee.

The door opened suddenly and without warning, but Jyn didn't look up.

"Oh _really_ , Miss Erso," Kay sighed.

The both of them had clearly adjusted their appearances to fit the local bill, something clearly done countless times before. Cassian's hair was pushed back in contrast to what he usually did, and he looked casual but not enough to be noticeably untidy, loose slacks and a simple shirt.

It was the first time she'd seen him in anything but combat fatigues, and it occurred to her that seeing her loose-haired and in normal clothes was a first for him too. She noted that his eyes didn't wander, and that he stayed relatively blank-faced in contrast to Kay's blatant disapproval. "It's just a leg," she said, in response to Kay's complaint.

" _Just a leg_ ," Kay echoed, shaking his head, eyes pinned firmly to a point above her head. "Does anyone else hear the shrieking, cacophonous disintegration of proper manners and minimum decency, or is it my ears acting up again?"

Jyn finished securing the strap and started to reach for the knife she'd taken from Cassian's pack, but he was faster. The knife she'd left behind was still with him, and he held it out — blade first. "You left this," he said.

She took his lack of comment regarding her pilfering of his pack as tacit approval, slid the blade through the sheath, and let the folds of her skirt fall forward to hide the weapon. All done. Cassian gave a small nod.

Kay folded his arms. "And how exactly is a proper young lady such as yourself meant to reach that?"

Jyn set her foot back on the floor, totally unconcerned. "Quickly," she answered.

Kay looked at Cassian, like it was his doing. "I hope you know that the chances of us being caught and shot for espionage," he said, as the latter prepared to leave. "It's _high_."

* * *

Lyra Moreau and Luc Augustin strolled at a leisurely pace through the town square of Châteaubriant, shoes tapping on the cobblestones beneath their feet, her hand resting in the crook of his arm while they walked. The sun shone over their heads in defiance of the storm that came the night before, and there were market stalls set up around the central fountain, bustle and noise as though there was no war — though a closer examination of the goods revealed gaps where shortages had taken their toll.

Cassian had spent the first ten minutes of their entry into the town making sure that Jyn was adjusting well to the demands of the mission. She'd passed the field exams for undercover work, and she'd been living in France since before they'd brought her in, but there was a part of him that thought Jyn defied the kind of repression — a self-imposed plainness — that agents were meant to adopt to stay out of sight. There was just something about her that seemed the antithesis of that, a fire that burned too bright to be smothered.

But there she was, holding his arm as Lyra Moreau, wearing clothes he'd never seen on her before, _normal_ clothes a girl her age might wear, with her hair — which he'd never seen loose — stirring gently in the breeze. It was a strange sight, seeing the visual proof that the Jyn Erso who preferred anything that made close-quarters combat more convenient (down to clothes, mannerisms and weapons), who could disarm and incapacitate two cadets twice her size, could also look like a young woman with no secrets to hide.

For once, she looked her age. Not older than she should have been, but eighteen and so — _young_.

All of this should have made her a stranger to him — this new, never-before-seen Jyn Erso — were it not for the fact that the look on her face, the stubborn set to her mouth…it was a challenge and a purpose.

Cassian knew she was going to be fine.

Kay was invisible in the morning crowd, but Cassian wasn't worried. It would look suspicious for all three of them to be walking together. A couple and a pedestrian as separate units attracted less attention, and Kay knew where the rendezvous point was.

They had a meeting at noon, but it also couldn't look like they were going somewhere. Jyn knew it without being told, and she dawdled by stalls as any normal visitor would, picking up odd things here and there and holding them out like she wanted to show him. Cassian played along, but the bulk of his attention was on their surroundings, on the dozens of tiny conversations they overheard in snatches as they passed. There was an Officer Schultz rumored to be up for a promotion next month. A _mademoiselle Valerie_ was said to be collaborating with the Gestapo. A local bookseller had vanished from his shop during the night. There —

"They're talking about a new shipment of hostages," Jyn said, in French and in an undertone. "There's a prison camp near the town. The people came from Nantes — the Germans are going to shoot them as reprisals if Saul isn't put under control."

Her low voice was almost lost in the sound of the rushing fountain, and it took Cassian a moment to detach from his eavesdropping, the pace of his thoughts trying to distill the waves of static into isolated threads of usable information. In spite of it, he saw the strange, closed look on Jyn's face and made a guess at what she was thinking. "That's not why we're here," he said. "I'm sorry, but it's not."

Her grip tightened around his arm. "The reason why they're taking people from Nantes is because Saul's causing trouble," she answered, in a hard voice that made it perfectly clear she wasn't going to make things easy for him. "Doesn't seem that far from the agenda to me."

"And if we succeed in persuading Saul to change his approach, we'd be helping the hostages," Cassian reasoned.

Jyn squinted into the sunlight, her hand raised to cover her eyes. "We both know that's not true. It's too late for those people once they're inside the camp."

Cassian studied her in the silence that ensued, trying to decide how to answer. His experience in intelligence gathering and interacting with difficult contacts were coming into play. There was cajoling, gentle — but meaningless — reassurances to instill false hope as a controlling element, and as a last resort, abandoning them altogether. Just a body in an alley. A body floating downstream, disappearing into the rush of the canal.

But Jyn would never accept any of it, and against those instincts, he wished he had something better for her, he genuinely did. A justification, or maybe an assent that would take away the guilt, but he had his orders. They all did.

"We can't divert from the mission. I'm sorry."

Jyn didn't look surprised, or disappointed. Just blank, shutting him out from her thoughts. With a soft exhale that escaped between her slightly parted lips, she lifted her head to look at the banners hanging from the town hall; red, white and black fluttering where the French flag used to hang in the morning light. "I wonder where I've heard that before," she said in a low voice.

Cassian wondered if it was a studied injury, inflicted with cool precision, or Jyn just had an uncanny instinct as to how she could hurt him. But the last thing they needed to do was start an argument in the middle of a street, so he shook his head and pulled her further from the stalls. "The place is just up ahead," he said, pretending they hadn't spoken about it at all. "He'll be in there."

The painted green door opened to a haze of cigarette smoke and the pungent smells of a drinking establishment open for business. Cassian hesitated at the doorway, and turned back to her.

"Maybe you should wait here," he said.

Jyn paused. "Why? It'll look suspicious."

There was a shout of raucous laughter and the clatter of something breaking from inside the bar, but Jyn didn't even flinch. It occurred to him that whatever explanation he came up with would probably fall flat, seeing as Jyn had likely burned down or beaten up people in worse places than a seedy bar.

"Is this about your contact?" she asked.

It was, but not for the reasons she thought. "He's…difficult," Cassian said.

Jyn raised an eyebrow, undaunted. "So am I. Maybe we'll get along."

 _A little too well_ , Cassian thought. Which was the main concern. Jyn's allegiances were by no means steady, and he was concerned that too close a glimpse into the kind of freedom she was missing as an agent — it might compromise her commitment to helping them find and convince Saul Guerra.

So he tried again. "Women don't usually go into places like this."

Jyn's eyes narrowed slightly, and she moved closer. Cassian stiffened, braced for some kind of blow, but she stood on her toes and learned into him like she was whispering something in his ear. Her hand was surprisingly small, curled against the base of his neck, and she laughed at nothing, all part of the act — a show for whoever might be watching.

"Maybe we're just different," she whispered, and pulled him inside.

Cassian was aware of his pulse — how fast it was — and he told himself that it was because of their surroundings. The place was rowdy even at the best of times, where everyone seemed to live like it was the end of the world, and then some. His eyes took a second to adjust to the dimmer light, suspended amber from the ceiling, and he glanced over his shoulder at Jyn — who wore a reliably unfazed expression at the chaos — before beginning to make his way towards the back. The man behind the bar gave no sign of recognition at their entry and continued to polish glasses, murmuring every now and then to the dejected-looking customers sitting in front of him with half-empty drinks.

"Charming," Jyn said, as a woman in a somewhat incomplete form of dress whispered past with a tray full of glasses. "A little early for cabaret, isn't it?"

Cassian gave her a look. "I didn't choose the place. At least we won't be overheard here."

Jyn sidestepped to avoid a drunk customer stumbling towards the toilets. "What you're saying is, everyone — German, French, or otherwise — has other things on their mind."

Cassian smiled briefly, not thinking about the way her cheek had felt pressed to his. "Something like that."

There was a curtain made from strands of beads, and he pushed through them, his irritation already beginning to stir at the drawn-out process of meeting a contact. For someone doing illegal work, the man set himself up as though he was an obscure sage of wisdom in a distant cave, and Cassian disliked wasting time.

The back room was scattered with small round booths meant for familiar customers, too thick with a fog of cigarette and cigar smoke for their inhabitants to be fully identifiable. An old piano clinked away somewhere further in, but Cassian was trying to find a familiar face.

"Where is he?" Jyn asked.

Cassian was about to answer when he heard the shuffle of a deck of cards, and the crackle of a cigarette. "About time," drawled a voice. "I was starting to think you weren't gonna show."

"Old habits," Cassian muttered, turning in the direction of what he'd heard.

The cloud of smoke cleared away, and Han Solo leaned forward to grin at them, a cigarette between his teeth. "Sit down," he said. "We've got a lot to discuss."

* * *

 **Not to spoil anything, but I have the next two chapters written up and things are gonna EXPLODE. I'm so freaking excited to share!**


	7. The Pilot

**I know it's been a bit of a wait, but here he is :)**

* * *

 **The Pilot**

Strange things were happening in the mountain. Pilot Rook kept his head down and continued to walk. Loading and unloading typically wasn't the job of the pilot, but he was aware of the lower status he'd been designated (people born outside of Germany always were), and the soldiers — tall and broad-shouldered and menacing like the boys who used to kick him in the schoolyard — preferred to laugh and sneer before helping him.

They had guns, he didn't.

So he kept his head down and walked where he was told to.

There were noises all around; the landing bay was busy with activity. He could hear the sputter of sparks from a welding torch landing on rainwater (a storm was raging outside), and the clang of things being built, orders being shouted. Doors cranked open and shut, hiding things not meant for someone like him to see. Different uniforms, different faces.

The mystery of it nagged at him; of course it did. The Experimental Science Division was a rumor, whispers among even the Wehrmacht — soldiers and officers both. Rook was never asked to join in the discussions, but he'd heard and he'd remembered. Strange stories, about weapons that glowed, things that could blast through walls, solutions in test tubes that could make a person stronger…just stories, told to pass the time, to make them feel like the war was _in_ their control.

When the officer for his unit asked for volunteers (could it be volunteering if the alternative was hard labor?), for pilots to make regular and exclusive trips to supply a vitally important ESD with resources, Rook hadn't quite believed it. Until he'd been shown the flight path, saw how it wove through canyons and unsteady weather and patches of impossible visibility, and realized how dangerous the trip was, each time it was made. Of course they preferred to risk soldiers like him. If they crashed, the worst thing that could happen was a lost plane and a missed shipment of coal. The Luftwaffe would still have pilots to send on bombing trips to Britain, and there would be another like Rook to take his place.

Bodhi Rook had lived his life trying to avoid conflicts and notice as much as possible, but that didn't mean he was incapable of stubbornness, and he quietly refused to die. Others could do that, and his officer could be surprised — maybe even disappointed — every time he returned to make a fresh run, but Bodhi Rook would not die.

Live, that was all he wanted. That was all he set his sights on. Not a promotion, or favorable notice from his hard-mouthed officer, who treated his cadets like dogs and had eyes as narrow and distrusting as the others.

 _I will stay alive._

It was the second time he'd made the trip from the mining field to the Experimental Science Division, and Bodhi still couldn't quite believe his luck. The plane had almost plunged straight into a granite rock face because of poor visibility, but he'd made it. Bedraggled and in need of refueling, he'd made it.

His hands were slippery with nervous sweat, and the crate handles were slipping. Bodhi kept his head down as he struggled through the open steel walkway with part of his cargo, conscious of watching guards and the risk of them reporting him if he looked too curious ( _like a spy_ , a thought he quickly shoved back down).

His palm was throbbing now, and Bodhi felt the rope start to slip from his grip. He shut his eyes, praying not to be noticed…at the very least… _please._

Then —

The crate wobbled, and the lid came loose for a second, dislodging something small that plinked away like a coin. Bodhi lunged impulsively for it, realizing as he did that it was shiny, instead of dull and dusty like coal, but it vanished off the side of the walkway, falling into the suspended darkness beneath. Bodhi's heart was in his throat, sure that he would be blamed, except the crate righted itself, from someone picking up one side in support.

To help him.

"Careful there," said a voice without hostility (that was the first thing Bodhi would always notice). "It's heavy."

Bodhi hesitated, the words lost in his confusion. "I — ah — I'm sorry."

The man was in a gray uniform, plain, but the markings on it were unfamiliar to him — until he read the German for _science_ on the crest emblazoned across the sleeve, and paused, dumbfounded. This man was one of the scientists for the ESD. One of the best and brightest (he had to be), handpicked to craft things meant for destruction, trusted to create and experiment…a genius.

Why was someone like him helping an inferior pilot?

"You don't have to help me," he said, his speech halting with nerves. "I can — I'm supposed to do this by myself — I think. I'm not sure. I don't want any trouble."

"Nonsense," came the answer, efficient and understated. "I saw someone in need of help. If I am well, and able to provide assistance, what excuse do I have to stand idly by?"

"Because…" Bodhi fell silent as they passed a pair of guards, who bent their heads in respect to the man helping him with one side of the crate. "Because I'm not —"

— _like you. I was born at the edge of Russia. My parents were born elsewhere, across an ocean. My skin, my hair, my eyes — all dark. They say I'm inferior, and I was taught to believe them. I —_

"None of that matters here." The stranger turned to look at Bodhi over his shoulder, and the creases at the corners of his eyes showed tiredness, but also that he was kind. "Knowledge and the courage to press forward is what we prize in scientific endeavor."

Bodhi again fell silent at the strangeness of the situation he'd found himself in. An assignment to run supply trails to a mysterious division tasked with experimental science, with a crate that plainly wasn't coal like it said on the flight manifest, and a weary-looking scientist with kind eyes volunteering to shoulder some of the burden, who spoke to him like he could read his thoughts.

Bodhi felt like a human being. He felt _seen_. And for once in his life, the knowledge that someone saw him — _really_ , genuinely — didn't paralyze him with fear.

"T-thank you," he said.

They were at the base of the cargo elevator now, and the man set down his half of the crate with a soft grunt, rolling his shoulder with something like ruefulness. "Not as young as I used to be," he sighed. "Don't worry, I'll send someone to help you with the rest of your load."

He held out his hand, and Bodhi shook it without thinking, purely from instinct. "I — ah — you —"

The words failed him, but the man only smiled. "Thank you for your service," he said.

"Officer Erso!"

He — the kind stranger — turned at that, and Bodhi, in a moment of unthinking curiosity, looked too, catching a glimpse of another man in white at the far end of the corridor. The aura radiating off the uniform, the proud set of his stance — they made Bodhi avert his eyes like he'd accidentally looked too hard at the sun. His pulse was hammering again, begging not to be noticed.

"Duty calls, I'm afraid," said the stranger, _Erso_. "What's your name? I imagine you'll be making the trip quite often from now on, I've heard we're to have regular pilots."

"B-Bodhi," he blurted, only belatedly realizing he should have followed protocol and used his last name. "Sorry — sorry — I meant Rook. Bodhi Rook. Pilot."

"Bodhi," said Erso. He smiled again, but this time it came with a kind of resigned melancholy that seemed to settle in the lines of his face, scored deep into the skin by something other than age. "My name is Galen Erso."

Bodhi couldn't do anything except nod, and ducked his head in a hasty courtesy — something that made him immediately feel like a fool — but Erso didn't laugh. He turned and walked towards the man in white, his arms folded behind his back and proceeding at a calm pace, as though he wouldn't be hurried.

" _You_." A guard was watching him, now that Erso had left. "Get back to work."

Bodhi hastened to do as he was told, but his mind was churning with unanswered questions. Who was Galen Erso? Who was he really?

A final thought, more urgent, more confused than ever:

How could a man like him be working for Germany?

* * *

Jyn wasn't sure what she'd expected from the combination of _American_ and _smuggler_. She'd been to Manhattan before — again with Saul — and she got the impression that most Americans were content to stay within their nation's borders, preferring to remain out of the problem of European warfare.

Clearly they were dealing with an exception.

"You're late," said their contact, removing the cigarette from his lips and breathing out a small cloud of smoke to add to the already saturated room. "And I thought I was just meeting you. Pick a girlfriend up on the way?"

Cassian sighed, like he was dealing with a familiar but tiresome friend. "I got here as fast as I could," he said, pulling a chair out and gesturing for Jyn to sit. "You haven't met. This is —"

"—Han Solo," he said, barely glancing at Jyn, in favor of continuing to shuffle his deck of scruffy poker cards. "I'm the guy who's gonna get you out of a tight spot."

Blunt, cocky, and straying casually towards rude. But Jyn didn't mind rudeness — she found that it often went hand in hand with uncompromising honesty, and she took a seat with something close to a smile. Cassian had to have a legion of contacts as part of his intelligence gathering, and she didn't mind having a front row seat to watch him deal with a difficult one.

Maybe that was what it looked like when he dealt with her.

Cassian had just sat down when the curtain of beads rattled again, and Kay strolled past them — without a glance — to sit at the next booth. Jyn heard the rustle of book pages and his drink order, purely a stranger in the same location through nothing but coincidence.

Solo didn't seem to have noticed, peeling back a card every now and then between shuffling, and grunting to himself like he'd guessed it wrong. Everything about him seemed to ooze lazy confidence, from the way he'd made himself comfortable in a meeting scheduled by someone else, playing cards like the only thing that mattered was his time, and they could damn well wait for it. Maybe the arrogance stemmed from his good looks — golden boy, young Hollywood, that kind of nonsense — but Jyn saw the scar on his chin and wondered how much of it was an act.

Someone didn't run smuggling trails through war-torn Europe and evade capture without being at the very least intelligent — or crafty. Maybe Solo was used to being underestimated, playing low expectations to his advantage. Which included assuming the role of the good-looking, laid-back renegade, smoking a lazy cigarette in a backroom meeting with spies.

"You still owe me for that last poker game, you know," he said, with a glance in Cassian's direction.

"It wasn't my idea to bet on that game," Cassian said, barely moving his lips. "And you're the one who owes _me_."

"Who's counting, huh?" Solo laughed, holding out his hands.

"Oh, get on with it already," Kay muttered irritably, somewhere to Jyn's left.

Jyn rested an elbow on the back of her chair, her head half-turned as though she was listening to the mediocre (but loud) piano tinkling away in the background. "Is he going to help us or not? We're wasting time."

"Oh, he'll help," Cassian said pointedly. "This is just his negotiating technique."

"Nail on the head, C—" Solo paused at the look on Cassian's face (maybe sensing Kay's glare from the next booth over) and scratched the corner of his eyebrow. "What are you calling yourself these days? It's pretty hard to keep up."

"Augustin," Cassian said, nearly through his teeth. "And we already agreed on the price."

"That was before they brought in extra hostages from Nantes this morning," Solo said, matter-of-factly. "You know what that means — things got messier in the city thanks to the nut job you put in charge of fighting back. Friendly fire wasn't in the original contract — verbal, by the way — so I'm upping my fee to cover my overhead. Risk, reward, _et cetera_. You fill in the blanks."

Not as unintelligent as he looked, then. Not even close. "I'm not _quite_ sure that's what you're covering," Jyn said, still pretending she was listening to the music, not the men. "Sounds like you're scared of a challenge."

Solo scoffed and flicked an ace across the table. "Call it whatever you want, sweetheart, but your boyfriend's paying my price, or my ride stays firmly where it is."

Cassian exhaled. "How much?"

Solo grinned past his cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling, clearly considering it. "Let's see. Plan A to get you guys into Nantes was much simpler, but that's out the window now, and you can thank your friends for that. Now Plan B needs some props, most of them not counterfeit-friendly. So for the ones we'll need to buy, let's add ten thousand francs to the original price. On top of that, we'll need some forgeries — good ones — and those are hard to come by. If we use my guy, it'll tack on another ten thousand. Then there's the cost of getting shot at, or thrown somewhere real nasty without a window. So really —" he broke off to inhale again "— you're looking at about fifty thousand extra."

Kay snorted, half-hiding the sound in the ruffle of pages. "It might be cheaper to shoot you and find someone else," he said, a sentiment that Jyn didn't entirely disagree with.

Which would have been a problem, since she didn't have a gun. But Cassian did, and she knew where it was.

Jyn shifted her chair, closer to Cassian's side of the table. "What forgeries?" she asked, a question that earned her multiple blank looks. "You said your plan for smuggling us into Nantes needed forgeries. What kind?"

Solo eyed her speculatively over his cigarette. "Death certificates. Notarized, stamped, the whole deal. And those are pretty hard to come by without corpses. Lots of people trying to fake their death to get out of trouble, you get how it is, sweetheart."

Jyn didn't respond to the casual endearment. "I've done those before," she said flatly, in a businesslike way that might have made Kay proud. "Sounds to me like we just saved ten thousand francs."

Cassian bit back a laugh. "I forgot to mention that," he said to Solo. "My mistake."

Solo immediately sat up at the mention of a discounted price. "Hey, it's still forty thousand extra," he answered, a new edge to his voice. "Except now I'm tempted to tack on a surcharge for unfair competition."

"What about a stupidity discount? You —" Jyn began, but was cut off mid-sentence by Cassian intervening, clearly sensing that she'd been about to call Solo something rude.

Well, _ruder_.

"Come on," he said, gesturing for a waitress with a small — surprisingly convincing — laugh. "We're all on the same side here, aren't we?"

Cassian ordered more drinks from one of the dubiously-attired waitresses, and Jyn pressed on the dull throbbing at her temple, already sensing where the whole exchange was going. Manufactured male camaraderie over booze and cigarettes, something as inefficient as it was pointless.

After the waitress had drifted away with their order, Solo made a skeptical noise, his eyes still on Jyn. "I don't do business with Nazis, but that's about all we have in common, pal. I'm still with the side that pays me. It helps if they don't try to bargain, either."

Solo punctuated his sentence with a glare in Jyn's direction. "Now where's the fun in that?" she responded, with a smile like razor blades.

They all fell silent when the waitress returned bearing rattling glasses of cognac, and Jyn didn't fail to notice the way she pressed on Cassian's shoulder before leaving — even though the subject of her interest seemed more or less oblivious to it.

 _What a phenomenal_ _waste of time._

Cassian caught Jyn's eye as he pushed one of the drinks towards her, but she only gave him a surly look in response, making it abundantly clear — if his brain was still on the mission and not on other distractions — that she didn't think very much of his persuasion techniques. Solo took a swig from his glass and sat back again. "So you're a forger, huh?" he said, jabbing his cigarette into an ashtray with what seemed like unnecessary force. "Standards certainly got lower since the last time I saw you, Auggie."

"You're one to talk, Han," Cassian said, swirling the drink around in his glass. "I remember you considering an offer — at the time."

" _At the time_ ," Solo stressed. "Thankless job, and you don't get paid much for your trouble, either. At least I have one of those covered, doing what I do."

It was Jyn's turn to scoff. "Do you?" she queried. "Seems like you're missing something — from where I'm sitting, anyway."

Solo toasted her with his glass. "Maybe it's the vantage point, sweetheart," he said sarcastically.

"Maybe." Jyn leaned forward to take a card from Solo's deck and flipped it over with a flick of her thumb. Queen of Hearts. "But I doubt it. Look, Mr Solo, we're wasting time. How about twenty thousand extra to cover your costs, and we'll call it a deal?"

Solo flicked his cigarette into the ashtray. "Now why would I go for that, sweetheart?"

In answer, Jyn released the safety on Cassian's gun, which was currently resting underneath the table on her knee. It was quiet, but a sound trained spies always listened for, and a self-preserving man like Solo _had_ to know by heart.

She saw the recognition flicker in his eyes, along with a gleam of something feral, something almost like excitement. _Reckless, thrill-seeking_. "Because I have a gun beneath this table, pointed at somewhere I'm _sure_ you'd rather I not shoot," she said, never once breaking from her slight smile. "Twenty thousand, Mr Solo."

* * *

In a moment of unwelcome digression, Cassian wondered what Kay's odds for a successful mission were — now that Jyn had just pointed a gun at their only way into Nantes and a meeting with Saul Guerra.

He had a feeling it wasn't high.

"Twenty thousand, Mr Solo," Jyn said.

As soon as Cassian heard the click of the gun, he straightened up in surprise, because Jyn wasn't supposed to have anything except a knife. Which meant —

The noise-suppressed Welrod was gone from the back of his belt. "What the hell are you doing?" he hissed.

"Odds of success just dropped to forty-five percent," Kay volunteered, from the next booth.

"I think it's pretty obvious that your girlfriend's a thief, _and_ a forger," Han said, one hand raised above the table in helpful salute. "You sure know how to pick 'em."

Cassian shot him a look, warning Han not to make things worse for himself. Given what he knew about Jyn's temper and her demonstrated ability to survive in hostile territory, there was a good chance she'd pull the trigger if Han so much as called her _sweetheart_ again — if she didn't tear him to pieces first.

Unfortunately, they were in a unique situation where there was a corresponding danger to Jyn too, because Han's response to threats regarding his personal safety — if his memory served, and it always did — was to return fire.

Either way, the mission suffered. Han Solo was the only person in Europe crazy enough to take them into a volatile war zone like Nantes, knowing more or less who and what they were, but Jyn Erso was their only chance to get through to Saul Guerra and maybe — if they were lucky — succeed at unifying the disparate resistance factions in France.

It also went without saying that all four of them unequivocally did _not_ need a shootout in the middle of a crowded bar. Cassian sat forward, putting his arm on the table between Jyn and Han, like it could stop either of them from shooting. "Let's all calm down here," he said, his tone even. "I'm sure we can reach a deal."

They both ignored him. "You'd really do it, wouldn't you?" Han said, one hand still conspicuously out of sight — and Cassian had no doubts whatsoever that it was curled around a gun. "You'd really shoot me."

Jyn held his gaze, a kind of savage excitement gleaming on her face like she wanted to see what Han would do next. Cassian's eyes darted between the two, analyzing and dissecting the risks and alternatives, odds of detection and likely escape routes, but the thing that struck him was how Han wore a not entirely dissimilar expression.

Both reckless, both stubborn, both hating to be told what to do.

Knowing their shared commonality should have made diffusing the situation a possibility, but the realization of how much they shared was an instinctively unwelcome one, as though it (paradoxically) made Jyn and Han something of a team, more of a team than she was meant to be with himself and Kay.

So Cassian watched, and he waited. The silence stretched as tight and tense as steel wire, with Solo's expression remaining unchanged, staring at Jyn like he was seeing her for the first time. Then he laughed, and raised both hands — empty — at his sides. "You've got fire, kiddo," he said, nodding with something like appreciation. "Okay, you have yourselves a deal. Meet me in twenty minutes at the lion statue behind the plaza."

Jyn twisted the gun around and handed it back to Cassian underneath the table, and he snatched it away before she could do anything even more risky. "Never do that again," he muttered.

"You're welcome," she said shortly, getting up from her chair to go.

"I think I'm starting to like her," Solo said, clearly meant for once she was out of earshot, but Cassian found that he preferred not to answer.

* * *

Once again, Jyn was in trouble.

"I don't see what the problem is," she said, pulling her blouse over her head and ducking to replace it with one meant for actual rough wear. "From where I'm standing, I just saved the Resistance thirty thousand francs."

"You left out the part where you stole your commanding officer's gun to threaten, and almost _shoot_ our contact in the groin," Kay said, from outside the truck where she was changing. "How would _that_ look on the official report?"

Jyn shrugged, and tossed her skirt out onto the damp grass, having replaced it with slacks and a sturdy belt. "Interesting."

Cassian had gone with Solo to get the rest of the so-called props for their entry into Nantes, leaving her to wait in the woods with Kay (Jyn had volunteered, but the words had fallen on suspiciously deaf ears). She supposed it was meant to be some kind of subtle punishment, since she'd probably defied orders.

In all fairness, they'd never told her _not_ to.

Jyn poked her head out of the truck, and her half-unbuttoned shirt made Kay turn the other way like he'd been prodded with electricity. "Must you _always_ be in a state of indecency around myself and Cassian?" he asked irritably.

 _Maybe until it stops being funny_ , Jyn thought vindictively, doing up the rest of her buttons. "Look," she said, in what was meant to be a reasonable tone of voice, "thirty thousand's a lot of money. They could use that to pay you. It'll still be a pittance compared to everything else, but —"

The nostrils in Kay's very straight nose were flaring in what could only be described as thinly suppressed homicidal urges. "Miss Erso, your behavior back in the rendezvous point was inexcusable. I might even describe it as going _rogue_."

Jyn rolled her eyes and reached for her boots. "I thought the team designator was _Rogue_. They expect us to bend the rules."

"They most certainly do _not_ ," Kay answered. "I've half a mind to send you back to the farmhouse until the extraction — and so does Cassian."

Jyn looked up at that, paused in the middle of her efforts to lace up her boot. "What happened back there, that's how Saul Guerra negotiates — at gunpoint," she said fiercely. "It's what he taught me, it's how he thinks, and the fact that you and Cassian can't seem to understand that…all I can say is best of luck to you. Because if you send me back to wait quietly until it's all over, I _guarantee_ General Draven'll be picking up the pieces. Or maybe he could use the extra thirty thousand francs to pay Solo to do it for him."

Kay narrowed his eyes at her. "I wouldn't get too cozy with Mr Solo if I were you," he said snippily. "That man comes and goes like the wind. Not to mention, you threatening to shoot him was reckless and ill-considered. What if he'd decided to shoot first?"

Jyn's first response was a sarcastic answer, but Kay had hit on something she'd wondered about herself. Threatening to shoot Solo had been a risk she wouldn't normally have taken (too noisy, too loud, too messy), except…she couldn't explain it, apart from it being instinctive.

Maybe she saw something of herself in the smuggler. Not the arrogance (though maybe a little) or the good looks, but the fact that he worked chronic underestimation to his advantage, playing with appearances and manipulating the unfair slant to favor him. Pretending that he coasted by on his looks and charm, instead of the side of him that clawed and scrapped and fought for his place in the world, because more fool them for thinking there was nothing more to him.

Jyn had been underestimated all her life, maybe Han Solo had been too.

But none of this was likely to make sense to Kay in the slightest, so she shrugged, dropping her booted foot onto the hard earth. "He wouldn't have shot me," she said. "I just know he wouldn't have."

Kay scoffed again, and she looked over. "It doesn't sound so bad to me, you know," she added. "You should try living like he does, without being tied down for once. No orders, no uniforms…uncomplicated. Easy."

Kay looked at her over folded arms, leaning on the side of the truck. "Some of us don't have the luxury of drifting while our country goes to war," he answered. "Even if that does entail certain _complications_."

Jyn had been about to tie up her hair again, but she thought the better of it, in favor of asking an honest question — one she was sure Kay would answer, without Cassian there to mitigate the sting of truth. "If you dislike me so much, why did you agree to have me assigned to your mission? Cassian listens to you, it would have been easy to throw me over to another team."

She was quickly learning that Kay's way of showing terminal exasperation was to light a cigarette, something he'd only done a few times while outside of field work. He wasn't a habitual smoker; she could tell by the way his brow knotted at the taste when he wasn't doing it to keep up a cover. There was a long silence while he inhaled, deeply, before releasing the breath in a cloud of white mist. "Because, Miss Erso," he said, rubbing at the corner of one eye with the tip of his finger, "my specialty is strategic analysis, which means I proceed with hard facts and personal histories in order to predict whether someone is likely to be a help or a hindrance. You've gone untethered your whole life, are hostile to authority, have trouble committing to any form of stability because of some unresolved childhood trauma, and are in possession of a truly terrifying volatile temperament. You can see what _I_ think."

Jyn almost smiled at the brutal honesty of Kay's assessment. "I can," she said. "But?"

Kay was looking at the patch of blue sky showing through the trees. "I trust Cassian's instincts. Always have, always will. He's got a brain for numbers and logic, but he also lets his instincts guide his decisions. He trusts that about himself — I never could — and more importantly, that's what makes him a damn good agent."

A few embers dropped from the smoldering tip of his cigarette, and Kay ground them into the dirt with his boot. "He sees something in you, Miss Erso. I don't think he knows quite what it is just yet, but it's enough to make him want to believe that you could be more than just a terminal wanderer with a criminal record." He chuckled to himself, and breathed out at the trees. "And here I thought the work had all but stamped the dreamer out of him — I suppose I was wrong."

There was something different about the way Kay spoke about Cassian, uncharacteristic of the stiff-backed Major who followed his orders to the letter, whose thoughts ran in numbers and _if so, then_ logic. It was more than just the ungrudging respect between fellow colleagues, but the genuine care that came from friendship, and longstanding familiarity. It was protective, and loyal, and nothing like Jyn had ever experienced, not with anyone in her life. Kay was here because of his orders, but he was also standing here because he'd never abandon Cassian.

"You want him to dream?" she asked, with a flicker of a smile.

Kay glanced at her, like the question had surprised him. "It's the closest thing people like us have to an…uncomplicated existence," he said, without malice. "I believe that, yes."

Jyn wondered if she was going to regret saying what she was about to. "I'm sorry," she began, haltingly, as though she was trying to say the words in Finnish. "Next time, I'll…try to act…more like you, Kay."

Her labored promise made Kay choke on the smoke, and he was laughing behind his hand. "You've very welcome to try, Miss Erso."

* * *

Cassian glanced out the truck window to make sure they weren't being followed. The engine seemed indiscreetly — impractically — loud in the woods, even though the trees were by no means silent on their own, bird calls and the skitters of unseen animals pawing their way through the forest paths.

The windows were open to let the breeze into the overheated driver's compartment. The both of them had been sweating; Cassian's sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and he'd left his jacket on the seat beside him. In the absence of hiring outside help (risky), they'd both had to lift the funeral caskets into the back of the truck from Han's disreputable (and unnamed) dealer.

"We should have chosen a different meeting place," he said. "An undertaker's truck driving towards the forest looks strange."

" _If_ anyone saw us," Han added, stepping casually on the accelerator. "One thing I've learned is that coffins are a surefire way to get unfriendly eyes to look the other way. Everyone's afraid of the pearly gates. They don't like to think of dying, especially during a war."

Cassian resisted the urge to roll his eyes at Han's unique brand of circular logic. If there was one thing Han could be trusted to do (and there weren't a lot of them), it was to talk his way out of trouble, even if it was Grim Reaper trying to settle the score. Trust Han to out-talk Death — or make a game attempt to, anyway.

"I'll take the fire and brimstone, thanks," he muttered, still watching the road behind them through the round wing mirrors.

Han barked a laugh at that. "You know, you really could loosen up a bit," he said. "You're traveling the world with a pretty girl, and all you can do is look at Nazis."

Cassian didn't even know how to begin crafting a response. Or whether his reaction was meant to be indignation, exasperation, or resignation — since he'd known what Han was like from the beginning. "I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a _war_ around us. Jyn's not here to travel — and neither am I. We're agents."

"Really?" Han looked intrigued. "So what's the mission? I thought you usually worked alone — or with Queen Victoria, Mr Stiff Upper Lip. Doesn't seem like you to work with someone like her."

Cassian brushed his hair out of his eyes. "If you'd accepted the Resistance's offer to join up, I'd be able to tell you anything you wanted to know," he said bluntly. "But you didn't, so it's classified."

"C'mon, old friends like us?" Han laughed.

Cassian jerked his head. "Trust me, the less you know, the better."

Han shrugged, as though to say _worth a try_. "She has nice eyes," he said offhandedly, without clarifying who he meant. "Killer stare. You don't see a blue like that a lot."

 _Not just blue_ , Cassian corrected silently, because he'd noticed. _Blue, green and gold._ But he kept staring out the window, preferring not to give Han the extra ammunition of an actual response.

Then, thank god, they were there.

"I see them," he said, bracing a hand on the truck door.

The clearing was deserted apart from the smaller truck and two people. Kay had been smoking (he and Jyn must have disagreed again) and upon sighting the truck, he dropped the lit cigarette and smothered it with his heel, a hand going to the gun he kept beneath his coat. Jyn's head was poking out from the back of the truck, and he caught a gleam of steel from her knife, already raised and ready to attack.

Neither of them relaxed until they saw Cassian. "Just us," he said.

Jyn dropped from the truck with a crunch of fallen leaves, gathering up her loose hair and twisting it behind her head as she made her way over to them. She was back in her usual clothes, scuffed boots and dusty slacks, worn leather gloves with fraying threads at the cut-off fingers, marks scored deeply into the material. Jyn had an instinct for danger as much as she did for combat, and she was clearly already anticipating trouble in Nantes. "Do we have everything?" she asked, her gaze moving over their truck and back.

"Depends." Solo hopped down from the truck too, skimming at the trailing strands of her hair with the back of his hand. "How'd those death certificates turn out, kiddo?"

Observing firsthand, Cassian thought this was an incredibly gutsy move. Then again, Han was mostly guts and split-second choices, and he seemed to have taken Jyn's prior threat to shoot him as an invitation to be teasingly familiar, like they were old, close friends. He hovered close to her now, casually encroaching on her personal space from his vantage point of six feet compared to her five feet three inches.

Kay took this in with a somewhat dubious look, as though silently questioning whether Han had a death wish. Thinking along the same lines, Cassian was already preparing to step in when Jyn looked up at Han like she'd just noticed how close he was, dismissed it, and pointed with her chin towards the smaller truck. "Hardly worth the ten thousand francs, but they'll do."

"True professionals never overcharge," Solo said in her ear, and went to check on her work.

Their exchange hadn't been more than a few seconds, but to Cassian they already looked like a pair, two sides of the same coin. Han making a joke, chucking her chin, and Jyn throwing him a look that warned him not to try it, even though her lips were already curving in a half-smile…too easy. In another life — in another turn of events — they might have been the ones meeting him and Kay in the smoky backroom of the seedy bar.

Cassian didn't want to think about that version of Jyn, or Han. The one he had with him on the mission might have been wily, difficult, and an unquestionable troublemaker — but he liked her.

In spite of everything they were and weren't, for all their small disagreements and incompatibilities neatly documented in crisp personnel files, he liked Jyn. Not like that, maybe, not anything deeper, because god only knew there wasn't supposed to be. He just…he liked her.

Maybe that was why the sight of them made him feel like there was something gnawing at him from the inside.

"Oh dear, it appears they've become _friends_ ," Kay murmured, shuffling through the identity documents they'd need to walk around Nantes as civilians.

Cassian felt his face go blank in a studied reflex to hide his thoughts, especially when Jyn looked over at him. "So," he said, in a clipped voice, "what's the progress?"

"I forged our death certificates, Solo's work permit, we retrieved our supplies from the farmhouse…" Jyn said, ticking off the items on her fingers, "and Kay delivered his disciplinary speech for my —"

"—insubordination, major infraction of operative conduct…" Kay mumbled, as fluid as reciting his prayers on a rosary.

Cassian nodded, still keeping his expression guarded. "Good," he said. "Han thinks we'll make Nantes before nightfall if we leave now."

Kay lifted a flap of dark green canvas to look at the back of the truck they'd driven in. "I still wonder if this is one of the worst plans we've had," he said, clearly thinking aloud.

"Don't forget about Oslo," Cassian reminded him. "Or Paris."

"Right," Kay said, with a snap of his fingers. "Silly me, only third-worst."

"What happened in Oslo?" Jyn asked, in a rare moment of curiosity.

"The answer's only for well-behaved junior operatives," Kay answered, his smile chilly. "My lips are sealed, by His Majesty's orders."

"How convenient," she muttered, and Cassian accidentally caught her eye, only because he hadn't looked away fast enough. "And you? Bound by His Majesty too?"

Her old playfulness had resurfaced, and Cassian, in spite of himself, felt it thaw at his self-enforced distance. He almost answered her, but —

Solo rapped on the side of the truck. "Time and tide wait for no man — or woman — you know," he said. "Not much point in reaching Nantes if it's on lockdown for curfew. Unless you guys plan to spend the night in a coffin."

* * *

Jyn threw her small pack into the truck and planted both palms on the edge to haul herself up, but Solo helped her with a cupped hand beneath her boot and a hand on her waist, lifting her with ease into the back.

That surprised her — she'd been sure Solo was the type to rescue someone from drowning, then ask for payment. A _Good Samaritan_ charge, he'd probably call it.

"Thanks," she said, inadvertently glancing back to see that Cassian had reverted to his prior stony expression.

Jyn didn't know Cassian nearly well enough to guess what his problem was, but since he ran on the default track of _Resistance Agent_ , and she had a feeling that her (an untested new operative) befriending one of his familiar contacts threatened some kind of invisible territory. Did agents get possessive over their intelligence contacts? Maybe with the effort going into cultivating them.

But _petty_ didn't seem to be in Cassian's character, especially since _befriend_ in Solo's case was a descriptor used in the absolute loosest sense. It made her frown, and she faced the front again, silently counting the number of caskets stacked at the back of the truck. She'd wondered why Solo asked her for six death certificates, and seeing the size of them now, she had an idea.

"And how many of these are going to be hiding priceless art?" she asked, throwing open the lid of one casket to inspect the lining. Easy to cut through and glue back into place.

"Hey, it's not my fault that the Germans don't open coffins if they think there's dead people in 'em," Solo drawled. "Besides — I gotta recoup my costs, don't I? Planes don't fly themselves out of Lisbon on goodwill. Gasoline's expensive."

Jyn lowered herself into one of the caskets to test out the length. The half-expected chill of pretending to be dead and sitting in a genuine coffin didn't quite come — it actually felt more comfortable compared to some of the beds she'd used in her lifetime. Cassian and Kay were moving the rest of their gear into the other caskets, but Solo crouched by hers, clearly wanting to talk.

"So what's a girl like you doing with the Resistance, huh?" he asked. "You seem like the type who doesn't take orders."

Jyn wedged her pack between her feet and leaned against the back of her casket. "I don't," she said, making herself comfortable. "They offered me something, and I accepted."

Solo's smile was as mischievous as his demeanor suggested. "So how's that different from being with the side that pays better?"

Jyn considered it. "It's a lot less lonely than I thought," she said, her gaze lingering on Cassian's turned back.

"We ought to get things moving," Kay said, while Cassian continued to work.

Solo saluted him ironically. "Yessir," he said, and braced his hands on the lid of Jyn's casket. "All good in there?"

"Perfect fit," Jyn said, lying flat inside the coffin. "Try not to look so pleased."

Solo winked. "Sleep tight, kiddo. See you on the other side."

* * *

 **Bodhi's scene is basically establishing what he's up to while the others are running around doing spy stuff. So in terms of what he's doing in the German army, there were definitely non-German soldiers involved on the Axis side. Some of them were POWs, some enlisted willingly - lots of reasons. Side note: there was even an Indian Legion around at the time. Really interesting bit of history to read up on, if anyone's interested.  
**

 **Look forward to the other members of the gang popping up soon :)**


	8. Into the War Zone

**Otherwise known as "The One Where Everyone Loses Their Marbles A Bit From Jealousy".**  
 **I'm kidding. They have other things to worry about :)**

* * *

 **Into the War Zone**

For Jyn, lying inside a coffin at the back of a moving truck counted as a first. She wasn't bothered by small, confined spaces (waiting in the cave for Saul to get her proved that once and for all), and they tended to be handy when trying to escape pursuit. But it _was_ strange.

Noises felt like they were coming from far, far away. Little creaks sounded like distant cries, bumps in the road like the scratching of small things, voices — neutral, or otherwise — were unbearably, excruciatingly muffled. The minutes during the inspection at the Nantes checkpoint had felt like hours, and Jyn had been so tempted to crack the lid just an inch, just so she could hear what Solo was saying to them.

But she hadn't, and they'd gotten through.

The truck had been moving slowly for the last half-hour since the inspection, swaying and rocking in a vaguely soporific rhythm, but Jyn felt all the sleepiness burn away in one heart-pounding blaze as the clang of something — a gate being lowered — echoed close by.

She reached to her side and picked up her knife, curling her gloved palm against the grip.

The lid burst open with a rush of cool air, and Jyn exhaled in relief. But it wasn't Han who'd come to get her, it was Cassian.

"We made it," he said, like he could barely believe it himself. "We're in Nantes."

Jyn sheathed her knife and accepted his hand to help her out of the casket. It had been hot, breathing in her own air and staying as still as possible, and she knew her cheeks were flushed pink when she slid out the back of the truck, straight into some kind of loading bay.

"Where are we?" she asked, as Solo slammed the driver's side of the door.

"Morgue," he said, throwing her a beaten leather jacket like it was the most natural thing to do. "Undertaker's a friend. He thinks I'm just taking art out of the country — let's keep it that way."

Not being the type to turn down free gifts, Jyn slid her arms into the jacket to try it on. It was most definitely secondhand, maybe a little shorter than she would have liked, but there was something fuzzy in the lining and the shoulders fit right, which was all that mattered. She tended to move fast during fights, dodging and parrying to compensate for her smaller size. Judging by the faded smell of perfume — it wasn't Solo's either.

"Did one of your friends leave this behind, Mr Solo?" she asked, and he lifted his shoulders.

"Hey, if it fits," he said, with an unashamed grin. "And call me Han."

Jyn pushed a worn cap onto her head, tucking the twist at the nape of her neck out of sight. "Stop calling me _kiddo_ , and I just might."

"Jyn," Cassian said quietly. He and Kay were standing around a table, clearly about to discuss the final details of the plan.

Han clearly anticipated not being welcome to the conversation, because he rolled his eyes and made a show of climbing onto the truck for some unspecified purpose. Except that it involved loud shuffling.

There was no paper, no written plan, but she hadn't exactly been expecting one. The table beneath Cassian's hand was streaked with the colors of a sunset, burnt orange, faint gold and a wash of crimson. The light was coming from one of the high windows, clouded and small, but she guessed that it was a little past five, maybe later.

"Curfew starts at nine," Cassian said. "If we're outside and we're caught, they'll shoot. No jail, no questioning. Everyone out after curfew hour is assumed to be one of Guerra's."

"What's your plan to find his faction, exactly?" Jyn asked. "They're hiding in the mountains — we'll have better chances of finding treasure than stumbling into their hideout without an invitation."

"Less, actually," Kay pointed out. "They severed contact with HQ after their refusal to merge with the other factions. But lucky for us, we have intelligence that the Guerra faction have infiltrated the city. Some of them work in establishments frequented by members of the government — good to spy, pick up news, that sort of thing — and if we loiter around one of these places, we might be able to slip your name to one of them, hope it finds its way back to Mr Guerra."

Jyn lifted her eyes from the table and found herself looking directly at Cassian. "Hope?" she said, trying to decide if he was crazy, or something worse. "That's all you're basing this on? Us going through all this trouble to get into the city — the meeting with Saul — what it comes down to is _hope_?"

Cassian had watched her while she spoke, not speaking, and when she fell silent at the end of her question, he lifted his shoulder slightly, almost in defiance. "Resistance is built on hope."

The way he'd said it, like it was the simplest thing in the world, as untouchable as something of worship, clung to in the darkest of times and guarded like a secret part of the soul, simultaneously made Jyn think: _you fool_ , and something else. Something she wasn't quite ready to quantify, or name.

There was a slam from inside the truck, and their locked gazes broke, the both of them turning around to see what it was. Jyn blinked hard, rapidly, as though she'd been out of focus. Han jumped down again, a greasy rag in his hands. "It might just be my two cents," he said, wiping his hands on the cloth, "but I'd turn back right now instead of taking my chances in a war zone."

Cassian gave him a look. "Or, you'd rather get paid for the return trip now, seeing as it's unlikely we're about to survive."

" _Very unlikely_ ," Kay corrected.

They started to move, but Jyn shook her head, with a dawning realization. It was wrong, all wrong. The plan — a word used in the loosest sense — wouldn't work like this. "You're not serious," she said, and it stopped everyone short. She pointed to Kay. "You can't come with us. You look like Gestapo. We'll never get close to Saul's people if we're sitting anywhere near you."

Kay looked offended. "I do _not_."

Jyn glanced at Han, who cocked his head, as though just realizing the truth of what she'd said. "Oh, you're right. I think it's the nose."

"Well, forgive me if I'm not inclined to trust the word of a smuggler," Kay answered scathingly.

Han only held out his hands. "Smugglers like me look out for people who might be secret police, so you've kinda shot yourself in the foot there, your majesty."

Cassian, pinching the bridge of his nose, muttered a frustrated sentence under his breath. Jyn's Spanish was fairly limited, but she recognized the word _cabrón_ , which didn't sound very polite at all — a suspicion reinforced by Kay turning to him and adding as an aside: "Oh, I wholeheartedly agree. Rather an ass."

"Hey, that's the thanks I get for smuggling you guys past half the German reserves in France?" Han said, even though he didn't sound particularly offended.

Jyn supposed it had something to do with being called a _bastard_ or an _ass_ on a relatively frequent basis, but before the three men could digress into the kind of argument that showed every sign of becoming an ego contest, she interrupted to bring things back to the matter at hand.

"Look, it's nothing personal," Jyn said, winding a scarf around her throat. "But Saul's trained his men to be suspicious. If three strangers ask for a meeting with their leader — and one of them looks like he should be wearing an SS badge — they'll shoot us, guaranteed."

Kay looked deeply annoyed, even for him. "And you couldn't have shared this — ah — _vital_ information before we went through all this trouble?"

"That was before I found out that the Great Plan hinged on nothing more than _hope_ ," she said, with a pointed look in Cassian's direction. "Sorry, but I vote that you wait here with Han."

"You can't be _serious_." Kay turned to Cassian indignantly. "That's not the plan."

Clearly, they both knew who the deciding vote was, and Jyn looked at him too. "It makes sense," she said. "You brought me here because I know Saul. Believe me, we need to look like friends, or this whole thing goes to hell."

A moment passed, during which Cassian clearly weighed Jyn for what she was worth — her word, to be precise — and she waited. Like he said, _hoping_.

Then Cassian jerked his head at the truck. "She's right," he said. "We'll find a way to meet you later, but blending in matters more."

Jyn pretended the implied vote of confidence didn't make her stomach feel oddly light.

"Unbelievable," Kay said, stalking towards the truck. "Whose side are you on, _really_?"

* * *

"So this is goodbye, I guess," said Han.

Jyn had been waiting by the door, watching a harried-looking Cassian in a low-voiced discussion with Kay across the room, who was — to put it lightly — displeased at the sudden change of plan. She knew the feeling. Between thinking there was a more concrete plan and finding out it was the equivalent of a tightrope over twenty feet of empty air, and knowing there was no concrete plan only to have it swapped out for an even _less_ concrete one at the last minute — vexing, either way.

Then again, she knew quite well that the specificity of an agent's orders went only as far as an objective meant to be achieved. The plan (if any) was reserved for the operative to determine once they made landfall, taking local intelligence and on-the-ground circumstances into account. It sounded more like _directed survival_ to her, but she didn't imagine General Draven would be particularly interested in an outsider's opinion, least of all hers.

She gave an impatient sigh that neither of her team members heard, eyeing the darkening window above the morgue. Either they were discussing how trustworthy she was and whether it was some kind of ruse for the purposes of sabotage, or they were trying to reason their way from one half-baked plan to another.

Han stepped up to her, leaning against the wall with a hand planted above his head, nonchalance from head to toe. "Is it always like this?" he asked.

Jyn made a face. "Only whenever they're around each other. I'm starting to think there's a little club I'm not part of."

"That's your style? What d'you call 'em — gentlemen's club?"

She considered her answer, and phrased it as sweetly as she was capable of. "None of your business, Han."

"All right, Jyn." Han was looking at the pair of them, and a smile spread slowly over his _not_ unattractive features. "So I guess this is goodbye for now, huh?"

She looked at him through narrowed eyes. "Thanks for the vote of confidence," she said. "I'll remember to hit you when I come back, _alive_."

"Hey, you never know during wartime," Han answered, shrugging his shoulders. "Better safe than sorry. Couldn't live with myself if I sent a girl like you off without a goodbye kiss."

Jyn actually laughed in surprise, and the sound immediately caused Kay and Cassian to look over like they'd smelled smoke. "You're not getting a kiss," she said, even though the base of her neck was starting to feel a little warm.

But Han wasn't her type. Too brash, too loud, too… _same_. It'd be like kissing a mirror version of herself, only more annoying, male and taller. Like knowing exactly what the person across from her was thinking because the same thought had flashed into her head. No challenge, no intrigue. It wasn't what she wanted — _if_ she even wanted anything at all, and maybe she didn't.

So Jyn set her jaw and warned Han with a look not to try anything. But clearly, he had a penchant for bending the rules.

"Who said you had to give it to me?" he said, very close to her ear. He turned and kissed her on the cheek, in full view of everyone present. "See? Harmless."

It was like Han had snapped his fingers and performed magic, because Cassian was suddenly behind them, finished with his impromptu war council. "Ready to go?" he asked.

Jyn reached for the pack at her feet and swung it onto one shoulder. "Are you joking?"

Han held the door for them, returning Cassian's sparingly professional nod, and winking at Jyn before she stepped through. "Be seeing you."

* * *

They emerged from the mortuary's side exit and walked up a narrow, dusty alleyway, pausing on either side of the opening to make sure their covers were in place. Neither of them mentioned Han, or anything that had happened before the door swung shut just seconds before. The mission came first.

Jyn nodded silently at Cassian, and he nodded back. Steeling herself, she slipped out onto the street, blending into the flow of pedestrian traffic, Cassian at her side.

She'd been right to be careful, since there wasn't much of it.

Châteaubriant was the smaller town in comparison to Nantes' city, barely two hours by motor, but it was hard to tell they'd stepped into a city at all, rather than a ghost town. It was eerily quiet, windows in the buildings staring like empty eyes, broken glass and grit beneath Jyn's boots as the silent evidence of destruction not quite smoothed over. They made their way up the sloping street, and the only people they saw were ones hurrying like they didn't want to stay on the street for too long.

No market stalls, no children playing on the pavement, no bicycle bells ringing to signal pedestrians — nothing.

Then they reached what must have been the center of the neighborhood, and Jyn's throat tightened. There was a blackened ruin where one of the buildings used to be, a simple residential, but when she saw what stood next to it — a municipal police station — she realized what Saul's faction had done. They'd tried to take down a Gestapo station (everyone knew the French police meant German these days), and missed. Careless, and the Germans weren't the ones to pay the price. All they had to show for it was scorch marks on the side of the brick building that had been the actual target.

Cassian's hand was warm on her arm, and Jyn realized she was cold. "Hey," he whispered. "We have to keep moving."

Jyn wanted to spit, not at him, but the careless — fanatical — blinded men and women who'd done this. Saul's power over them, to the point where his fiery speeches could convince them that anything was worth the cost of a few dead Germans.

Maybe one of them might have been her. Maybe she would have had a gun in her hands. Maybe she would have been the one to throw the bomb.

Maybe — and this thought hurt her more than she'd expected — she might have been able to change Saul's mind, if he hadn't left her behind.

" _Jyn_." Cassian was pulling her now, away from the uncleared rubble and the charred, forgotten house. "Come on."

After they were clear of the square, some of the noise and animation characteristic of a city seemed to return, and Jyn shifted her arm out of Cassian's grip. Not out of hostility — she just wanted to walk alone.

There were still signs of skirmishes, sooty smears on walls, maybe the odd cluster of shattered glass, signs of where the local police had tried to burn away a painted _V_ winging across a blank wall, for fear of offending the German presence…

 _V_ for _Victoire_. Victory.

It was hard to tell how it might be true.

Jyn passed a child squatting in the shadow of a stone statue, a sword-wielding angel with half its wing gone, and hesitated. Before she could reconsider, she was already doubling back. She dug into her pocket and found a few francs, which she pushed into the girl's hand.

The girl was too dumbfounded to reply, and Jyn tried not to think about how a few francs wouldn't bring back the dead in Nantes. Cassian was waiting for her when she strode past him, her pace quickened as if to make up for the ground she'd lost.

They were drawing near the shadow of the church, but the windows were shuttered, the doors boarded up, paint slashed across to hide whatever had been written beneath it, and slashed again. The edges of the building seemed singed too, like it hadn't been immune to the dangers of the city either, consecrated ground or not.

"May the Lord be with you on this day," said a strong voice in French, echoing off the flagstones. "May the Lord be with you on this day."

A hooded man sat on the steps of the abandoned church, a long wooden staff resting beside him in the dust. There was no cup, no bowl for begging, he only raised his hand as people passed him, repeating the same blessing like clockwork.

"What's he doing?" Jyn said.

Cassian had already taken her sleeve in pre-emptive precaution against her going any closer. "The Nazis don't like Catholics. They've ordered all the churches in Nantes to be closed, and no one's thinking about appealing because the Bishop of France has gone silent. Says he doesn't want trouble. That man on the steps is either mad, or too devout to care that he's risking his life by blessing people on the street," he said in her ear. "Leave him."

Jyn turned to look over her shoulder as they passed, and she could have sworn that the hooded man was faced in their direction now, as though he knew what they were saying.

"May the Lord be with you both!" he called, but Cassian didn't seem to hear, his stare pointed straight ahead, like there was nothing — nothing — the matter with the ruin in front of him.

There was to her. "How can you be like that?" she asked, in a furious undertone. "How can you — _see_ — all of this, and just…have nothing to say?"

Cassian swept a quick gaze at their surroundings, then pulled her into a narrow side lane, clearly sensing that she'd been about to raise her voice. "Me?" he said, incredulously. "I'm the one who's been _fighting_ against the people responsible for these things. I haven't been the one keeping my head down and avoided forming an allegiance to anything and anyone except myself."

Jyn had been staring hard at the bricks behind Cassian's arm while he spoke, but she raised her head at that, because it stung. She'd expected Cassian to disagree — not to be _angry_ with her, and it sounded very much like he was. Even more than that, like there'd _been_ anger simmering beneath the surface for some time, and this was the chance to set it free.

Except Jyn could be stubborn too. She couldn't deny that she'd seen terrible things done to ordinary people, and _yes_ , she'd kept her head down, but the Resistance — through mouthpieces like Kay and Cassian — had judged her for doing the exact same thing as they were. Her only mistake was not slapping a so-called _cause_ onto her forehead. For all the Resistance's posturing, the talk about greater causes and gloried allegiances, the conditions in the real cities that their work affected — it spoke for itself. Saul Guerra may have formed a divergent resistance faction of his own, but the division had only become terminal, _critical_ , because General Draven and whoever he counseled with hadn't taken steps to bridge it before.

"The prison camp. The man on the steps," she listed, while the words thrummed with resentment. "They're the people who suffer while you and your types play _chess_ with their lives, with all your creeping, and guesswork, and _spying_."

"Hey." Cassian gripped her shoulder, not gently at all. "You don't know what you're talking about. If we tried to save every single person there is to save, we lose the war."

Maybe she didn't, and maybe she was being unfair, but there wasn't a phrase Jyn despised more than _just following orders_ , and Cassian — right then — seemed content to do just that.

"Sounds like you and General Draven need to rethink your priorities," Jyn said, her eyes hardened to shards of glass as sharp and dangerous as the ones she'd ground beneath her heel. "Because there won't _be_ people left to save if all you're ordered to do is strike deals and talk in backrooms."

Cassian's response to challenge was to fold his arms and stay precisely where he was, an infuriating habit that only made Jyn want to force something _more_ out of him, more than just this steely calm. "Larger objectives need to be followed, and orders need to be respected. If you can't stomach that, then maybe you shouldn't be an operative," he said, in a voice that cut with the neat precision of a surgeon's scalpel.

"Fine," Jyn spat. "Find Saul Guerra on your own. Bring Kay with you, leave me behind with Han. I'll let the General know where to find your bodies — _if_ Guerra's men leave anything of you for the crows to peck at."

She'd clearly said something to spark Cassian's usually dormant temper, and his eyes flashed with something almost dangerous. "Fine, you want to stay with Han. Next time, I'll remember that, agent Erso," he said, deliberate and quiet. "But for now, we're wasting time we should be using to find Guerra."

They had moved closer to each other during the course of the argument, responding to the natural push-and-pull of each other's words, but now that it was over — or close to being over — Jyn still didn't stand down, and neither did he. Cassian was acting like her commanding officer, and maybe he was, but they were disagreeing about something else that went unspoken, beyond the actual words they threw in each other's faces.

She'd struck him somewhere personal, and he'd returned the favor.

But like he said, there wasn't the time, and he clearly wanted to be done with the mission as much as she did.

"Fine," she said.

"Fine," he answered.

* * *

Jyn hadn't spoken to Cassian since their disagreement in the alley. She proceeded in stony silence at his elbow, close enough not to lose him in the flow of people — sparse as it was — but at a distance that suggested they weren't anything but two strangers walking in the same direction.

Cassian knew that Jyn's main point of contention would be the issue of authority. Her life had hardly groomed her to be receptive to commands without first questioning the _who, when,_ and _why_ of it. The reasons were obvious, and he practically knew them by heart. Figures of guidance were few and far between in her life — the father she'd presumed dead, her deceased mother, and the resistance general who'd abandoned her. She was a survivor, but she was also fiercely questioning of anything she was told.

Admittedly, Cassian had failed to defuse the argument as he should have. He'd gone at her point of weakness because she'd instinctively managed to put her finger on his, to the part of the work that always felt the hardest to justify — why one over the other, why some lives mattered more than others in the chess game of _Axis versus Allied_. Logically, there were always reasons, reasons Cassian could recite to himself whenever he felt himself slip, but consciences didn't operate on numbers and strategic analysis, and in his heart of hearts, he felt like there _couldn't_ be a justification for it, no excuse. At the end of the day, it was just what became the easiest to live with.

Some days, _easiest_ wasn't easy at all.

But all of it ought to have been said in the alleyway, and now Cassian was left with the general impression that whatever tentative goodwill they'd built up during Jyn's time in training seemed to have evaporated in the wake of Châteaubriant. Not that goodwill was necessarily essential to field work as operatives, but Cassian didn't like knowing that Jyn was angry with him, and that there were matters that hung unresolved between them.

Cassian sighted the tavern doorway and climbed the steps, ducking his head at the low lintel. Jyn followed, close only because the space and their cover stories demanded it. Their arrival went by unremarked, the most they got was one or two glances before more came in behind them; workers in overalls and smelling of a day in the fields or mines.

There were a number of options they might have chosen in order to get close to one of Guerra's fighters. The establishments they infiltrated were divided between the higher and lower class levels of reputability, both with their respective advantages. Upper-class establishments would be helpful if they wanted to pick up on German intelligence, but fresh faces into the echelons of high society would be scrutinized, less so than if they went to a simple neighborhood tavern. Middle-class, nothing remarkable, the kind of place people would walk into after a hard day's work, to exchange stories and neighborhood gossip. An inconspicuous mine of information.

Jyn bumped her shoulder into someone big and burly on her way in, and in an instant her fire seemed to spark again, but Cassian grabbed her arm again and pushed her along. "Not looking for trouble," he murmured as a reminder, and she yanked herself free to keep walking.

"I can walk by myself," she hissed, and Cassian left it well alone.

They edged their way to a shared table and sat down. The patrons only glanced briefly at them before going back to their foaming beers and conversation, clearly upset about something that had nothing to do with them. Jyn, her cap pulled low over her face, leaned into the shadow left by a convenient pillar, watching and listening. Further inside the tavern, Cassian could see clustered tables of German officers near to the music, and their raucously drunken singing of songs from home (the target of some resentment in the other patrons, though they kept their mouths shut).

They were served hot mugs of cider, and Cassian leaned forward with his. "Can't go anywhere without them," he said conspiratorially to the man across from him.

Agreement sparked in his gaze. "Swine," he muttered. "All the best places are theirs, all the best food and drink."

As they spoke, a pair of pretty girls passed their table, perfumed and lipsticked and undoubtedly French, but they brushed past their countrymen without so much as a glance, and there was a roar of welcome from the German side of the tavern. " _Collaborateur_ ," the man grumbled, and shoved his empty mug back to get another.

Cassian turned his head slightly to see that Jyn was scanning the inside of the tavern from her hidden seat. "There must be a backroom here somewhere," she said. "I might be able to stop one of them if I wander."

He disagreed. "Risky," he murmured, as an officer stumbled drunkenly towards the toilets. "It'll look suspicious if you're caught."

"Doesn't leave us with a lot of options," she said, and he detected an undercurrent of impatience. "We're on a tight schedule."

There was a stir near the door, and Cassian detected a dozen raised hackles, tension rising from something they were seeing that he wasn't. "What's going on?" he asked someone, as they walked back from the window.

"That's not a normal car," the man whispered. His breath was foul, onions and something pickled, but there was something else — close by.

Cassian turned, silently searching the faces around him.

It was the smell of gunpowder. Fresh, like someone had been test-firing to make sure the weapons didn't jam. There was always a second explanation, and in this case — moderating the urgency of suspicion — it was mining work, which involved gunpowder explosives just the same.

But there was no accompanying smell of fresh earth, and the absence of it put him on edge.

There wasn't time to process it fully; something else was happening.

" _Mon dieu, Obersleutnant_ Schmidt," someone whispered, and the whisper was traveling. _Obersleutnant Schmidt, Obersleutnant Schmidt_.

Cassian felt Jyn's fingers dig into his arm in a wordless question, and he searched his memory for the face and file to go with the name. _Schmidt_. Dieter Schmidt. Lieutenant Colonel. There'd been something in the wires about him replacing the previous security official in charge of Nantes, meant to be a step in a crackdown over an unruly city, quashing resistance to German rule.

"What's he doing here?" someone asked, unfriendly.

"Probably showing off," was the disgruntled answer.

But the doors banged open, and Cassian saw why. The Lieutenant Colonel wasn't blind-drunk — just very close to it — and stumbled in between two attractive, very young women, his face pink and flushed with drink. He raised his arm in a salute, and the dozen officers — maybe more — clustered near the back all leapt to their feet to return it.

As they passed the barman, Cassian saw Schmidt turn to slur something in his direction, and the man's fluent reply, his stiff gesture towards the area in the back. Unwilling, but compliant. Some of the noise died down at the front of the bar after the Lieutenant Colonel stumbled off to join his fellow countrymen, but Cassian was still searching for the source of the gunpowder smell, his thoughts racing at a breakneck pace. It didn't make sense — it didn't connect. Was there a Resistance fighter somewhere here? If so, who? And how could he approach him without being seen?

Jyn's hand was on his shoulder. "Who is he?" she asked.

" _Obersleutnant_ ," Cassian murmured. "He's one of the people in charge of policing the city."

"Not very smart, is he?" Her gaze flicked across the crowd. "Walking drunk into a place where he's the enemy."

"It's a show of confidence in the military administration," Cassian guessed. "Germans have nothing to fear — that kind of thing."

Jyn snorted quietly into her drink. "How's that going to look when he's lying dead on the floor with a knife in his back?"

Cassian shot her a warning look. "Don't say that. Don't even think it."

"I'm not," she said, matter-of-factly. "But th—"

She tensed, looking at something behind him, clearly seeing something he hadn't. He turned; the men sitting opposite from them had been replaced, their faces harder, more grizzled, and unfriendly. Jyn's eyes gleamed as she took them in, as though there was something familiar about what she saw. Her head moved, towards the German officers, then back again. "Something's not right," she said, and he felt his nerves draw taut in response to her agitation.

But before he could say anything else, she wedged her boot into a horizontal support in the wooden bench, and kicked. The men sitting across from Cassian bowled over with a chorus of yells, mugs and glasses smashing, foam and sour-smelling beer flying everywhere.

Cassian was about to yank Jyn out of the place — starting a scene with German officers and a senior official close by, was she _mad?_ — until a gun spun from one of the men's splayed hands, coming to rest in the puddle near his boot. "He has a gun," Jyn said, and all hell proceeded to break loose.

* * *

Jyn had been watching the tavern while the others had their attention on the Germans. There was hate and dislike in its various descending denominations, as expected from those beneath the boot of Nazi Germany, but she'd started to suspect something wasn't right when the men sitting near them had been shoved out of the way, by two strangers who had entered shortly after the Lieutenant Colonel. They'd chosen a table diagonally across from the German cluster, not close enough to eavesdrop, not close enough to take out their frustrations through petty gestures or audible insults, either.

So why?

While she'd been whispering with Cassian, she'd noticed their hands. Scarred, with blisters and mottled burns, like they'd handled crudely made and dangerous weapons in a hurry and with frequency. The same scars she might have had in abundance, if a man named Saul Guerra hadn't shielded her from the worst of them and taught her how to be careful.

Her head flicked to one side, gauging the distance it would take for a gunshot to the head. Point-blank — manageable with any handgun.

One of them nodded to the other, and slipped a hand into his jacket.

The pieces came together in one dizzying rush. They were going to assassinate the Lieutenant Colonel, probably on Saul's orders, and Jyn had some very quick decisions to make. She could either sit back and watch it happen, escape into the dark with Cassian — but the fighters connected to Saul anywhere near the tavern would probably all be dead by morning, either by their own stupidity, or from retaliatory fire by the group of German officers better armed and trained than they were.

It wouldn't compromise their cover.

But it would also make what she'd seen in the square much, much worse, because the Germans wouldn't stand for one of their own being assassinated by a defiant resistance faction in defeated French territory. The hostages in the camp outside of Châteaubriant would bear the brunt of it, probably more hostages from Nantes in reprisal…

It equalled a weaker French Resistance, a wearier, more beaten France, and people hungry for blood.

Damn her orders, because Jyn knew what she was going to do. What she _had_ to do.

So she skidded back on her chair, leaving her enough room to brace her foot against the table, and shoved with all her strength. The sturdy legs screeched across the floor, and the table caught the two faction members across the chest, knocking them straight off the backless benches onto the floor.

She turned to Cassian, who looked incredulous (probably because he assumed she'd actually lost her mind, after what happened at the meeting with Han), and Jyn explained her action in the most succinct way she could manage. "He has a gun," she said.

By some kind of unexpected miracle, Cassian understood, and he backed away from the bench, pulling her with him. Jyn held off, because he should have kicked the gun on the floor — he'd been closer to it — but before she could get there, men around them were getting to their feet. Two — five — eight…nearly a dozen now, fanning out across the crowd inside the tavern, their stances tense and ready for action. More were coming in from the street, stamping on the floorboards with the hard, determined march of men with a purpose.

Jyn swore under her breath. They'd come prepared.

The German officers were just starting to look around at the disturbance, the ineffable shiver of danger in the air. Jyn searched for the Lieutenant Colonel's face in the group, except they all looked the same to her, a pack of animals herded together and indistinguishable. Their uniforms may have given them power on the streets, but now — _here_ — it only marked them as prey.

A hush fell over the tavern, like the quiet before the storm. " _Vive la France_ ," someone said, and the first gunshot went off with a roar.

"Look out!" Cassian ducked behind the table, and he hauled Jyn down with him, shielding her from the spray of broken glass as bullets shattered the glasses on the table where they'd been sitting.

The two faction members she'd knocked over had been shot dead, and the fight was on the move. It sounded like the German officers were returning fire while the resistance faction regrouped, firing over their dead and others. Jyn slid behind a column for cover and Cassian dived behind another, the both of them waiting — listening — for an opening.

For a second — and a second was all they had — they looked at each other, mutually assessing the aftermath of their disagreement. Then Cassian nodded, and Jyn returned it. Whatever trust there was left, it was enough to try and get out of the situation together, alive.

She yanked off her cap and tossed it to the side. It would only block her ears and eyes, and she needed both if they were going to have a hope in hell of surviving an impromptu gunfight. The others (Resistance or German) finding out that she was a woman came only secondary to the first priority. _Survive_. Weapons were going off on all sides, panicked shrieks and glass shattering as people caught in the crossfire tried to flee, or failing that — hide.

A bullet sank into the corner above her head with a small explosion of powdered grit, and Jyn felt a brief — _deserved_ — flash of rage at Cassian for not trusting her with a gun. If she died because she was weaponless in a shootout…

But more importantly, whose side were they on? Jyn looked across the narrow space at Cassian, who'd drawn his gun and had it at the ready. Were they going to shoot Saul's men to stop them from causing more damage than necessary? Or were they going to fire at the Germans, because the skirmish had already started, and between helping the French and the Germans, there was really only one choice they could have made?

Before she could make it for real, a resistance fighter fell with a spurting wound in his throat, his gun falling from twitching fingers and landing just an arm's reach away. Jyn lunged for it. Her palm closed around the blood-slicked grip just before a bullet smashed into the spot where she'd been a second before, and she threw herself behind cover again.

" _You!_ " A German officer had her in his sights, and Jyn rolled, just barely missing the gunshot he'd aimed at her. Her pulse roaring in her ears, she squeezed the trigger and he fell with a spreading wound on his thigh, and she fired off a second shot into his chest before he could try again.

"Guess we know which side we're on," she said to Cassian.

Credit to him; he barely even blinked. "We need to move," he said. "We have to get out of here before they think we're part of Saul's faction too."

One of the lights exploded above their head, a dozen small holes peppering the plaster and raining dust on them both. "Easier said than done, Captain," Jyn muttered. "You have a plan?"

Cassian shot twice, and a German officer rolled senseless onto the floor at his feet. "Working on one," he said, and Jyn almost laughed at the sheer absurdity of the situation they'd found themselves in.

Their plan had been to encounter Saul's men, an encounter that would hopefully lead to a quiet, unnoticed meeting.

Suffice it to say the plan had exploded — literally — far out of proportion in terms of its success.

Jyn glimpsed an opening as a faction member fell, and gestured for Cassian to follow her. "Come on," she said, bending to steal a blunt truncheon from the dead officer's belt.

Cassian ran behind her, dodging bodies and overturned furniture alike. The people left in the tavern were either panicked and trying to escape or stone dead and senseless, but they all had something in common — they were obstacles. Jyn and Cassian were forced to scatter at machine gunfire, each of them diving to opposite sides for cover. Jyn didn't have time to worry about his ability to handle himself, and she was sure the feeling ran mutual.

In front of them, within sight of the door, a girl screeched — a single, shrill wail — that was cut off by the rapid _tap-tap_ of a Sten gun. She fell without a sound, blood smearing her lipstick, bullets in the front of her pretty red dress, and her friend — in spattered yellow — bent over her, weeping.

Jyn should have leapt over the body without a second glance. Saul's methods were bloody, but she'd be damned if she'd let them be the reason she and Cassian didn't make it out alive.

But the girl was her age — her dead friend too — and Jyn raced forward, grabbing the girl by the back of her dress and dragging her along into a run. " _Move_ ," she shouted, hating herself for being impatient, for having no sympathy at someone else's stunned grief. " _Move!_ "

The girl stumbled along, barely keeping up, and Jyn half-hurled her towards the stairs leading up to the apartment above the tavern. "Stay out of sight," she said, and glimpsed movement in her peripheral vision.

It was a resistance fighter, and Jyn almost left him alone, but he raised his gun at a target behind her, clearly branding collaborators as one of the enemy. The girl shrieked and scrambled up the stairs on her hands and knees, and Jyn — doubling back again — threw her elbow into the man's nose and slammed him hard into a wall. Maybe it was a betrayal of family — he _was_ Saul's, after all — but as far as she was concerned, she hadn't been part of their world for years.

 _Fool_ , she thought, even though it applied to him just as much as it did to her.

No time for that. There was a shout in German as one of the officers sighted her, clearly mistaking her possession of weapons as a sign that she was an assassin too. Jyn kicked over one of the benches so that the surface landed perpendicular to the ground and dropped to her knees behind it. The bullets blew a neat row of concentric holes in the thick, polished wood, and she fired off another round of shots over the top. The chamber clicked, empty, and Jyn tossed it away with a grunt of frustration.

Cassian was nowhere to be seen — was he dead? Hurt? — and even though Jyn wanted to look for him, for reasons too urgent and contradictory to puzzle over, she had to deal with her situation first. She was pinned down, no assistance.

Not that she needed it. Jyn whipped out the black iron truncheon, the length expanding to match her forearm, and then some, listening for footsteps.

Another resistance fighter fell dead on the ground, and there was nothing. She could still hear the Germans, maybe around three or four, definitely more than Saul's men — if there were any left. They were overturning tables with grunts of disgust, occasionally firing precautionary shots into bodies that looked like they might still be alive. Scanning what she could see of the room, she caught a flicker of movement. _Cassian_.

He lifted a finger to his lips, warning her with a look to stay still. He was crouched by the bar, where only she could see, telling her silently that he'd cover her from where he was.

Jyn didn't doubt he would, but they were behind her now. The table overturned with a slam, and her instincts took over. They hadn't been expecting her to be alive, unhurt, much less to be a woman. Surprise was a powerful advantage, and she used it with a vengeance. She went for the guns first, striking hard and fast until metal hit the ground, then to the softer targets like chests, knees, and throats. The truncheon was built for blunt impact, breaking fingers or wrists without prejudice, the weight of the metal compensating for shortfalls in physical strength.

A fist flew blindly towards her face, and she parried with a crushing swing that definitely broke bone, dodging another to sweep his legs out from under him with hers. She hit and crunched until there was only one disarmed officer left, and even he looked at her like she was purely mad. Maybe it was because she'd picked up a gun during the struggle, but insisted on using a blunt weapon anyway.

Jyn inhaled deeply to catch her breath, her muscles aching from the unrestrained ferocity of her attacks. "Come on then," she said in German.

"Jyn!" Cassian's warning shout was accompanied by a resistance fighter staggering towards them, his leg bent and splattering blood as he barreled towards them like a stampeding bull.

She saw the mottled round shape in his fist and realized what was about to happen.

"Hey!" she shouted, but never got to finish the thought.

There was a shot and the man went down, dead for real this time, the hand that had been about to toss the grenade pinned beneath his weight. Except —

Almost by accident, Jyn scanned the floor and found the pulled pin gleaming next to his other limp hand, slowly being swallowed by a spreading pool of blood.

"Get out of there!" Cassian yelled.

The only thing at Jyn's back was the German officer and the front window of the tavern. Three out of five seconds gone now. She had to think fast, so she swore and did the first thing that came to mind. She grabbed the officer by the back of his collar and twisted him around towards the grenade, her grip tight enough to strangle, and braced for the explosion.

When it came, it hurt a lot less than she thought it would.

* * *

Cassian saw the faction member stagger from the middle of a pile of bloodied bodies like something from a horror picture, dogged and crazed with purpose in spite of the arterial wound in his thigh — holding a grenade in his hand. Straight towards the last remaining German officer, who'd just been about to face down Jyn.

Cassian was out of the blast radius and protected by solid cover, but he still shouted for her. "Jyn!"

She'd been fighting in a haze of furious efficiency, disarming and taking down at least four soldiers all by herself while armed with nothing but a truncheon, and for a breathless second he was worried she wouldn't hear him.

Except she did, and the understanding dawned on her face.

Only she didn't run.

There was a split-second choice to make, but Cassian made it in less. He took aim and shot the resistance fighter before he could get halfway across the room, and he let out a soft breath of relief when the man crashed facedown onto the floorboards, the grenade trapped along with his arm beneath the body.

The relief was short-lived, as soon as he realized — from the look on Jyn's face — that the grenade was still live.

"Get out of there!" he shouted, and it was worse only because he knew it was probably too late.

Jyn probably knew too. But instead of running, she grabbed the officer by the back of his uniform and swung him around, like the last thing she meant to do was choke him to death, and before Cassian could stop her — the grenade went off.

The detonation was immediate and forceful, a shockwave that slammed him into the wall at his back. His ears were ringing when he got off the ground again, blinking at the red-tinted haze of dust and debris left by the explosion. Where Jyn and the officer had been was shrapnel-ridden floor and a gaping broken window, a ruin of twisted wood and blasted body parts. But he couldn't care about that now, or whether there were survivors upstairs who might have seen their faces. None of that mattered.

Cassian raced out the door and to the front of the tavern, only to find the German officer lying glassy-eyed on the stones with spreading patches of dark red gleaming on his gray uniform. Jyn had used him as a shield from the blast, but there was no sign of movement underneath the officer's body.

Cassian felt a tight ache somewhere in his ribs, and he was about to reach for the corpse when it twitched. Then, the German officer, still stone dead, rolled onto his face, and Jyn groaned beneath him, grimier and bloodier but amazingly — _beautifully_ — unharmed.

She cracked an eye at him. "All right?" she asked.

Cassian almost laughed with relief; he was nearly dizzy with it. "Could ask you the same."

"Never better," she grunted, and accepted his help to get back on her feet.

For a second, their hands stayed locked, because Cassian couldn't quite believe they'd made it out alive, and more importantly — that _she_ had. Reckless, but more brave and resourceful than he'd given her credit for.

He wouldn't make that mistake again, and he wanted to tell her so. But as always, there wasn't the time.

So he let go, and they ran for it.

* * *

Jyn wasn't bleeding anywhere (that she knew of), but getting thrown out a glass window and onto solid stone had its bruising qualities — even with an enemy soldier cushioning her from shrapnel fragments — and she was starting to lose her breath from sprinting immediately after the hard landing. Still, she pushed, because they could _not_ be caught at the place where German officers had been murdered in cold blood.

No, not murdered.

Assassinated.

She'd tried to stop Saul from making the mistake, but they'd failed.

The knowledge stung her worse than any wound ever could, and she gripped the gun she'd taken from one of the officers with cramped, bloodstained fingers. They made it about as far as the alley before someone shouted at them in German, in a voice ringing with authority.

"You there! Halt!"

Jyn and Cassian both froze, and she had no doubt that he was imagining the sound of a firing squad.

But it sounded like the officer had made the fatal mistake of coming alone.

 _Well_.

Jyn whirled, the gun in her hand, and pointed it at the only thing to mark a target — a gray uniform — before pulling the trigger.

Two things: the gun was empty, and she was firing at a familiar face.

" _Kay_." Cassian was breathing hard. " _Menos mal._ I thought I told you to wait with Han."

The exclamation went ignored, as Kay (dressed in full _Wehrmacht_ uniform, same as the first day they'd met) looked indignantly between Jyn and the useless gun. "You were actually going to shoot me, weren't you?"

Jyn let the emptied pistol fall to the ground and kicked it out of the way, too tired to care. "Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to."

Kay was looking hard at her, and she decided it was probably the blood. "It's not mine," she panted, just in case he was concerned. "Mostly."

"Things got interesting at the tavern," Cassian added, in a supreme example of understatement she might have corrected, if she wasn't conserving her energy for more sprinting.

Understatement notwithstanding, it was as though Kay's worst suspicions had been confirmed, and he grabbed Jyn firmly by the arm and began to march her towards the alley. "I'll deal with you later, young lady. Come on, from the sound of it — you've made a downright mess of your attempt to _blend in_. Maybe next time you'll think twice about asking me to stay behind."

Her relief at seeing Kay was undeniable, but Jyn gave herself and Cassian a hasty sweep, cataloguing injuries and anything that would look suspicious to the reasonably alert enemy officer. Both of them had soot smears from the grenade blast (in her case, she probably looked like she'd climbed out a coal mine), various incriminating blood stains (again, her especially), and all the injuries to suggest they'd been in some kind of struggle. Cassian had a fresh cut above his eyebrow, another on his cheek, while Jyn's knuckles were scraped raw from throwing punches, and her lower lip throbbed from a fresh split.

"What's your plan — you're going to pretend we're your friends?" Jyn said, pointedly. "Unless you haven't noticed, we don't exactly look like German military."

"He could pretend we're Gestapo informants," Cassian suggested, keeping pace with them while he checked behind to make sure they weren't being trailed. "Or worst comes to worst —"

He trailed off at the rumble of engines, and the three of them went still at the armored cars, unequivocally emblazoned with the German military insignias, passing them on the way to the scene of the skirmish.

 _Fantastic._ Just when Jyn thought their luck couldn't have gotten any more spectacular. "It's worse," she murmured, and received a warning hiss to stay quiet.

Kay saluted like any German officer, and Jyn whipped her hands behind her back to pretend she was in irons, noting out the corner of her eye that Cassian did the same.

They _almost_ scraped by, except for the one bringing up the rear. It rolled to a stop, and a trench-coated captain climbed out, followed by half a dozen armed guards. "What's this, lieutenant?" he asked. "Who are these people?"

Kay saluted again, stiff-backed and unsmiling. He'd snapped into the role of the quintessential German lieutenant like it was a second skin, and even Jyn (who'd never seen it firsthand and was disinclined to be impressed with Kay's _anything_ ) felt a tiny glimmer of relief, that they might actually have a chance.

"I arrested them at the scene of the crime, captain," Kay said. "There was an incident at a local tavern, and I found these vagrants trying to escape as I arrived. They looked like bystanders, but I thought it would be safer to take them in for questioning."

The captain raised one eyebrow. "Admirable instinct, lieutenant, but you should have stayed at your station. Now hand these two over to us, and produce your papers for inspection — I want to have a word with your commanding officer."

"Yes sir, but —" Kay didn't let go of Jyn's arm, courteously, delicately prodding the subject "— surely the priority for you is to secure whatever survivors you can from the unfortunate incident?"

Jyn felt Cassian wince.

"Do not question a superior officer's orders, _lieutenant_ ," barked the captain. "I will have you shot for insubordination if you cross me again."

"Sir, she's —" One of the guards was peering at her, and Jyn held her breath, hoping it didn't mean she'd been recognized as anyone in relation to _Erso_. "She's a woman."

 _Not good, but not terrible._

"Oh yes, I thought she might be suspicious — she was wearing men's clothes when I found her," Kay lied coolly. "French people are so strange."

The captain jerked his head at the guards, and they moved to secure the prisoners. Jyn tightened her grip around the truncheon behind her back, wishing she'd picked up an actual loaded gun, but Cassian was looking sidelong at her, and he moved his head from side to side once. _Don't_.

She wondered if he'd already given up, seeing how they were outnumbered, and outmatched.

She wondered if he was trying to tell her to use her cyanide capsule, the easy way out. They were caught now.

Jyn lifted her head to look the captain in the eye. He was still watching Kay in evident dislike, unaware that she was silently rehearsing how quickly she could take him out before the guards at his side — six in all — shot her for trying to fight back.

One Nazi captain wouldn't make much of a difference in the war, but…

Cassian was speaking in French, doing very well at sounding bewildered as to why they were being arrested. "We weren't involved in what happened — we were just passing —"

It still got his wrists clapped in irons anyway, and another one was coming towards her. Jyn dug her heel into the ground, bracing for the attack. If he so much as touched her —

 _Thunk. Thunk._

Jyn's arm was just poised to whip out in a neck-breaking strike, but she paused at the unfamiliar sound. All of them looked, in the falling dusk, at a single figure moving towards them from the steps of an abandoned church.

"Blessed be the name of the Lord, now and forever," said a deep, echoing voice that Jyn had heard somewhere before. "Let them go, captain, for they are innocent of wrongdoing. The Lord guides their steps, and they walk in His light."

"What is this?" the captain snapped.

"The local madman," one of the soldiers scoffed. "He sits in front of his ruined church and preaches all day — like a stray mutt who won't run when people throw stones."

The hooded man ignored them. "The Lord is with me on this day, and I am with Him," he said calmly, and planted his staff where he stood, squarely in front of the armored car like there was nothing to fear.

Then he lifted his head, and Jyn saw why. His eyes were a milky, sightless gray, and from the way they roved without direction around the scene in front of him, she knew it wasn't a trick of the light.

 _Blind_ , or as good as.

And he was trying to help them.

"A _blind_ madman," said the captain scornfully. "Step aside, or we'll arrest you for public disorder."

"Do as he says," Jyn found herself saying, in inexplicable — silent — desperation. "Leave us."

The man only smiled. He clearly wasn't a local, but she only saw the friendly lines in his sun-browned skin, the kind — almost habitual — tilt to his head. "I do not fear for myself," he answered, in a different voice meant for her. "For I am guided by the Lord."

The captain sighed in impatience. "Enough of this. Shoot him — and leave his body in front of the church as an example."

Jyn backed away until she felt Kay at her shoulders. _No_.

Two guards stayed on Cassian and Jyn, leaving the other four to have their rifles cocked, ready to fire, but when the first volley came, there was no body to fall on the stones, no blood to seep into the cracks. The priest moved faster than anyone could have expected, and his staff sliced through the air like a whip. Two rifles went flying into the dark, Cassian attacked the guard standing near him, and Jyn seized her chance to lunge at the captain. Kay could handle the guard meant to be watching her — she wanted _him_.

Her truncheon caught her target in the ribs, followed by a solid whack into the silver army crest at his shoulder, and when he fell back, gasping, she brought the length of the weapon down into the bend of his neck, smashing and repeating the crushing blows until the smirking, cold-eyed captain was lying facedown and still at her feet.

Her whole body was throbbing, aching and at near-exhaustion, but she wasn't done.

 _Have to help him._

Maybe it was the fatigue, or the disorientation of being too focused on her fight, but it didn't seem like the priest needed much help. As she watched, he caught a soldier by his arm and twisted simultaneously out of the path of a bullet, leaving it to ricochet off — completely by chance — to hit a third of his uniformed comrades. The staff was clearly made of wood, but the way he wielded it seemed to give the weapon the heft and striking power of an iron truncheon. Again and again he ducked, and swung, like a dancer in an impossible story, until only he was left standing.

A flicker of movement. One of the soldiers was still conscious, and he reached for his gun.

A single shot caught him at the back of the head, and he fell face-forward onto the ground. They all turned towards the source of the shot — apart from the man, who smiled calmly like he'd known all along it would come (how could a priest smile at murder?), bracing his palms against the staff.

"Close one, my friend," he said. "You almost shot me."

A gruff voice gave a growl of disgruntlement. "You're welcome, Chirrut."

The man that emerged looked more bear than human, untidy hair in woven braids and a hood he'd pulled down as though to have it out of the way when he shot. No uniform, no priest's habit, but he was helping them, along with his blind friend. His grizzled face looked like it had seen war before, not just because of the scar that cut across his eyebrow or his tanned cheek, but the look in his deep-set eyes. Wary, and jaded.

 _What on earth was going on?_

"Who are you?" Cassian asked, as the second man gestured for him to hold out his hands.

The question went ignored, and the man grabbed him by the wrists. " _Out_ ," he grumbled irritably, and shot through the link holding the cuffs together. The metal plinked away into the dark.

"Rogue team, I assume," said the man he'd called Chirrut. His head was turned towards Jyn now, even though she hadn't spoken, and he looked almost amused. "Didn't they tell you we were coming?"

Jyn looked around, and saw that Cassian and Kay weren't any less nonplussed than she was. "You're…" Cassian said, clearly having some trouble with his disbelief "…operatives. We were told there were agents in the city, but —"

"Only of a sort," Chirrut smiled. "Baze and I are here to assist in whatever way we can to speed your meeting with Saul Guerra."

The bear-like man — Baze — whirled suddenly, his rifle directed into the dark. "Before or after his fighters kill us?" he asked, in a perfectly flat voice.

The shadows were moving towards them, rapid and too many to fight. No uniforms — not German, then — but Jyn picked up the strong smell of blood and explosives, and she guessed it had something to do with the fate of the armored cars that had sped off to the tavern. A dim part at the back of her mind had been wondering about the possible survival of the German Lieutenant Colonel — she guessed the armed support meant they'd finished the job.

 _German._ There was only one uniform left standing, and —

" _Really_ ," Kay snapped, as the men surrounded them, guns drawn.

"Stop!" Cassian had moved faster than anyone had expected, putting himself in front of his friend, and Jyn had done the same, so quickly that she stumbled into Kay, her arms raised in her haste to stop them from shooting. " _Wait_ ," she said. "He's not an officer — he's with us."

Whether it worked, she wasn't sure, because the faceless men surged forward to separate her from Kay and Cassian. Someone grabbed her by the shoulders, another by the arms, yanking her forward into the throng and with enough force to bring her to her knees. Behind her, she heard Cassian grunt and Kay's noise of indignation at being manhandled, along with the less distinctive noises of Chirrut and Baze being restrained too. Jyn felt a stab of panic at the scrape of a gag descending past her face, and twisted out of its path. " _Stop_ ," she said, in a voice that rang fierce, fierce enough to make the hands stall at the ingrained authority — authority she hadn't used in years. "We're not who you think we are."

One of them, cloth pulled across his nose and mouth to mask his features, stepped forward to crouch in front of her. "You may not be German, but one of you killed our fighters," he said. "That makes you an enemy."

Jyn's eyes flashed dangerously. "Call us what you want," she said. "Just remember that Saul Guerra won't be happy if he finds out you hurt me — or my friends."

A shiver traveled the circle around them, as though the very name had power. Jyn remembered how the group worked, how fearful they were of the man who led them, but her trick didn't earn them more than a few seconds, and the squad's captain pressed forward again. "And why is that, traitor?" he spat.

Jyn threw her head back, letting them see her face. "Because my name is Jyn Erso," she said defiantly. "I think you might remember me."

* * *

 **So Chirrut and Baze have shown up too, yay! Again, sorry for the wait.  
I also decided to keep their names as is, because they're awesome, and I can't call Chirrut "Chiro" or something like that. Personal preference. Anyway, they'll have more time with Jyn and the others in the next chapter, and there'll be more backstory to the pair.**

 **Now onto the stuff Cassian said in Spanish:  
\- Cabrón was to call Han a bastard (but quietly :D)  
\- Menos mal means something like "thank goodness".**

 **I'm just gonna add a quick disclaimer about other languages that crop up in the fic. I'm bilingual, but to my everlasting regret and sorrow, one of those languages is not Spanish, French or German (*shakes fist*). So...yeah. I'm trying my best. Honestly, if you can help out with translations (especially if you know what people in 1940 talked like), that would be SO GREAT. My intention isn't to offend anyone, just treat my mistakes as an unintentional funny.  
Okay, I'm done now. Until the next update :)**


	9. Divided They Stand

**Divided They Stand**

Something hurt in Jyn's body.

Correction: _everything_ hurt in Jyn's body.

She had a bag over her head, and it had been there since they'd been bundled into trucks. Her hands were restrained with coarse rope that chafed at her wrists in time to each bump in the uneven road, and her fingers were stiff from cold.

In unpleasant contrast, her face was hot, partially from breathing and re-breathing the stale air within the confines of musty-smelling sackcloth.

Cassian wasn't on the same truck, or Kay. There were more than enough resistance fighters to keep the five of them under control, and Jyn knew Saul's patterns. She may not have been to this hideout before, but the protocols and plans never deviated much, wherever they went. They'd split the trucks up, have them take different routes to confuse pursuers, until they eventually reached a safe location for the rendezvous.

Jyn hunched over in an attempt to find some semblance to a comfortable position, resting her flushed face on her aching knees. She could feel the crystal pendant against her skin, cool as a dewdrop in comparison to her heated neck and throat. It was impossible to sleep, though she probably could have if she closed her eyes, just out of sheer exhaustion. She wondered if Cassian and the others were being left alone, or if they were being beaten for killing one of Saul's. It wasn't unlikely; Saul wanted his fighters brutal, he preferred it that way. It lowered the chances of them showing mercy to the enemy.

It should have been a case of simple loyalties. The unnamed, faceless man that Cassian had killed might have been a family member to her once — she might even have known his brother or his sister, mother or father, all conscripted in the righteous fight against the enemy, but Jyn couldn't remember. She didn't want to, and remembering how they'd lashed out like rabid animals against the people in the tavern, innocent or guilty — she found that she couldn't feel sorry that Cassian had shot one of them to save her.

One of the men said something in French (his accent was thick, provincial) before the truck ground to a halt. Jyn looked up, but she didn't hear anything except a ringing silence as her ears accustomed themselves to quiet again, and when it faded, the sounds of a wooded environment. A bird cried somewhere, and another responded, setting off a chorus through the trees.

Men were climbing from the truck, but she heard a _thump_ of a warning hit to stay put — and a guttural grunt in response.

So she hadn't been alone after all.

"Are you all right?" she asked, and heard them stir at her question.

"Baze is _all right_ if he gets to doze off," Chirrut said, and Jyn picked up the twang of American in his English. Not New York or Massachusetts — somewhere further west. "You've been sleeping, haven't you, Baze?"

A semi-familiar grunt. So Baze had been the one they'd hit. "I _was_."

Jyn almost laughed at how inhumanly calm they both were. "So you're…not a priest?" she said.

There was a rustle, like Chirrut had shaken his head. "I spent my childhood around enough of them to mimic their ways, and I was assigned to guard a chaplain during the first war — the Great War, as you English call it."

"I'm not English," Jyn corrected, more out of reflex than because she actually cared. "So you're an agent? For who? The Americans?"

"America's still neutral," Baze rumbled, like there was a distinction to be had. "We may be American, but we're not involved."

"Not officially," Chirrut added. "We volunteered to help the Resistance."

Jyn mulled it over. "But you're… _blind_ ," she said, in the absence of a more tactful way to broach the subject. "Does the Resistance…"

Chirrut chuckled.

"The fool's only mostly blind," Baze said, while his friend took his time being amused. "Our platoon encountered a gas attack while we were at the Front, and he decided to save the Father he was guarding before himself — by the time we got him a mask, it was too late. Permanent damage to his eyes. _Idiot_."

The last part was almost affectionate, but none of this was explaining very much to Jyn at all, and as though Chirrut sensed her continuing curiosity, he added: "Getting cleared is only about passing a few tests. Tests are nothing if you've got good instincts for the right answers."

"Chirrut convinced the fools upstairs to take him. Helped that I said I'd go wherever he went." Baze stretched out again with a heavy grunt. "Even to this place."

Seeing what Chirrut did in the face of armed soldiers with nothing except a stick and his four limbs, Jyn more or less got the idea of what might have convinced higher-ups like Draven that Chirrut was a good operative.

"The best secret weapons don't look like weapons at all, I suppose," Jyn answered, finally.

"They don't, do they?" Chirrut said cheerfully. "Baze is the best sharpshooter on the West Coast, but you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at him."

As a matter of fact, Jyn could, but she decided not to correct Chirrut, since Baze also looked like someone who would happily snap necks with his bare arms.

A silence fell again, and it was only broken when Chirrut asked, "Would you happen to know why they've stopped?"

"Maybe they've decided to shoot us after all," Baze volunteered, sounding only ambivalent at the prospect of death.

Jyn shook her head. "They're probably waiting for the others," she guessed. "They split the trucks up in case we were being followed."

"You know how these men think," Chirrut observed. "Saul Guerra is an old friend of yours, I assume?"

Jyn felt a twinge somewhere in her side, and she felt more tired than ever. Too tired not to tell the truth. "More like a father," she admitted. "Well, he _was._ "

Chirrut didn't say anything, but she heard him move, and a callused hand found hers. He was restrained, just as she was, not to mention a stranger, yet Jyn didn't pull away.

Maybe she was more exhausted than she'd thought.

Or just scared, and finally able to admit it to herself.

"Fools," Baze grumbled, and rolled over to go back to sleep.

* * *

"Cassian, will please you sit _still_?" Kay said irritably. "You're giving _me_ chafing injuries."

"Where's Jyn?" Cassian said, trying to hear something over the rumble of the engine. "Did they take her somewhere else?"

"I'd do my best to answer you, but seeing as I had an identical sack over my head — I can't say," his friend answered. They were speaking in Spanish to minimize the risks of being overhead, but even in another language, Kay still managed to inflect every syllable with copious sarcasm. "She knows these people, doesn't she? Besides, if they'd taken her anywhere she didn't want to be, we would've heard her kicking and scratching from a mile away."

None of it particularly reassured Cassian, but the truck hit a bump in the road, and the impact made them both groan. He'd hit his head on one of the steel supports at the back of the truck, an uncushioned blow despite the bag covering his skull, and judging by the sound of it, Kay was having to pull himself back upright after falling over.

A pause. Then —

"Why isn't she here with us?" he asked, and his friend sighed in exasperation.

" _Quiet_ ," one of the men hissed in guttural French, and the butt of a rifle collided with his calf, leaving a stinging welt in its wake.

"Tell us where she is, then," Cassian said, in French this time. "Where's Jyn Erso?"

The men were murmuring to each other now, and there was a stir. "My friend says you're the one who killed Louis," said a different voice.

"Oh dear," Kay said, and switched rapidly to French. "Gentlemen, please. We don't want any trouble."

A gun prodded at Cassian's leg again. "Answer the question. Did you kill him?"

The question was meant to stir guilt, and maybe Cassian was meant to feel it — he had shot a resistance fighter who'd been part of an attack on the Germans. They had a common enemy, and he'd killed a man meant to be an unspoken ally.

But the same man would have killed Jyn with that grenade, and nothing epitomized the problems with Saul Guerra's men as much as that. They were careless, indiscreet, and they treated the existence of an enemy as sufficient reason to justify vicious and ill-considered attacks, collateral damage to fellow oppressed notwithstanding.

Cassian wasn't sorry for killing the unnamed fighter, not just because he'd taken life before, but because it had been to protect Jyn.

Instincts told Cassian to bite his tongue and feign ignorance, but he straightened his spine, turning his head towards the source of the voice. "Where is Jyn Erso?"

Something hard cracked across his face, and the force of the hit threw him against Kay. "Really, we're all on the same side — I must protest —"

"Kay, it's all right," Cassian grunted, past the throbbing in his cheek, and they hauled him back up. "Don't —"

A boot thudded into his arm, a misaimed blow meant for his ribs. Cassian toppled over again, landing hard on the steel. He was the object of frustration, and they were done holding back.

"Cassian!"

"The Erso girl can't protect you," hissed his attackers. "Only Saul Guerra decides the fate of traitors to the cause."

"We're not traitors," Kay spat, in a rare loss of outward composure. "You —"

Cassian blocked another kick aimed for his face, but another landed in his back just as quickly, skewing his balance.

"Tell that to _him_ ," they said.

Another fist came his way, and this time Cassian didn't dodge fast enough. The punch slammed his head into something hard, and everything went black.

* * *

Jyn's limbs were stiff and uncooperative, and when she forced her legs to stretch to their full length, she felt the muscles protest from the exertion of taking on a tavern full of hostile fighters. If she'd been on her way back from a successful mission with Saul's men, there'd be hot water (not much, but some) to soothe aches, homemade salves that stung and watered her eyes. There'd be strong-smelling food from any number of unnamed countries of origin — good, and more importantly, _hot_ — followed by a long talk with Saul Guerra until the candles burned low, just listening to the hoarse, eloquent voice crafting arguments and telling stories.

It had been years since she'd let herself imagine what it might be like, and she reached with her bound hands towards her collar, feeling for the leather cord and the crystal. This was her now, the only thing that remained constant through her turbulent life.

She didn't need Saul Guerra. She didn't need anybody. She didn't…

"That's a strange necklace you have," Chirrut said suddenly.

Jyn assumed he'd fallen asleep like Baze, before realizing that there was even less of a chance that he might have seen her crystal — what with being mostly blind and sitting with a sack over his head.

"How do you know I have a necklace?" she asked. The words sounded slurred to her, or maybe it was her imagination.

"How does anyone know things?" Chirrut said, in a faintly playful manner she suspected she'd have to get used to. "I trust what my senses tell me, and you, Jyn Erso, have a necklace around your throat."

"What is it, then?" Jyn said, interested in spite of her tiredness. "It's as close to a magic show as I'll be getting."

Chirrut inhaled, as though he was thinking. Either that, or he'd found a way to smell elements. "Some kind of stone," he said. "A crystal. It sounds…different. Unique."

" _Sounds_?" Jyn repeated. "You can hear crystals?"

Chirrut didn't seem particularly elated at getting the right answer, like he'd known all along that he had it. "Most things have a sound, the way they respond to the things around them. Stones usually whisper, they echo noises around them, but your crystal — whatever it is — it _sings_."

Jyn didn't even know if he was teasing her. " _Sings_ ," she said. "Right."

"Leave him be," Baze rumbled. "Either he's right, or he's wrong. Don't encourage him."

"Your faith in me is touching," Chirrut said, gently playful again.

"Faith," came the scornful answer. "I don't know how you manage to keep it, after all this time."

The exchange was private, almost like the ones between Cassian and Kay, except shaded with something a little different, an element she couldn't quite pin down. It was still familiar, just…not quite the same thing. "I thought you said you weren't a priest," Jyn pointed out, unable to help herself.

"Just because I'm not a priest doesn't mean I don't believe," Chirrut replied. "And I do believe in a higher power. Something much greater than all of us."

"Let me know when He or She decides to help get us out of this mess," Baze muttered, clearly close to resuming his nap.

"Shh." Jyn sat up straighter, more sluggishly than she'd have liked because of her aching muscles. "I hear engines."

Chirrut listened too. "Indeed. Their compatriots must have caught up with us."

Jyn tucked her necklace away in a hurry when she heard footsteps scattering fallen leaves. "Get out," ordered a rough voice. "Move."

She stumbled clumsily from the back of the truck, unable to see where she stepped, and someone tore the hood off — along with a chunk of her hair, by the feel of it — before shoving her again. " _Move_."

Jyn scanned her surroundings, sucking in breaths of cold, unhampered air. They were in a forest — a _real_ forest. At first, waiting in open air with vehicles seemed like an incredibly unsafe thing to do, but now that she could see, the trees were grown so thickly, so densely overhead that she didn't imagine any overhead fliers would be able to spot them if they tried.

"Really, this is _appalling_ behavior," said a voice from nearby, and Jyn felt a gush of relief.

"Kay? Are you —"

Kay came stalking into view, prodded along by a pair of Saul's men. He looked deeply displeased about something, but before Jyn could finish forming her question, Cassian appeared from the recesses of a truck, except —

There was a forming bruise on his jaw, and bootprints on him from where he'd been kicked. The cut on above his eyebrow and his cheek were from the tavern fight, but something had made them bleed worse than they should have. Their gazes locked and there was relief there, but Jyn's was already swimming with red, and she whirled on the spot, rounding on the group of Saul's men.

"I said my friends weren't supposed to be harmed!" she snapped.

She searched the crowd for a target and alighted on a tall fighter wearing a red band around his sleeve, Saul's mark of a captain. His authority was further proved by the others grabbing her arms in restraint when she took a step, as though they knew she'd fly at their leader if she could.

"Jyn," Cassian said, he was as close to her as they'd let him. "It's all right. They didn't harm us."

"Oh, I think you'll find that they _did_ ," Kay interjected. "They seem to think Cassian killed one of theirs."

"He did," Jyn said, making sure the leader heard every word. "But he did it to protect me. Your man was unskilled, and _sloppy_ — Saul Guerra doesn't tolerate either of those things."

There it was, the unforgiving voice of Saul's lieutenant again, and the crackling fury of it lashed at them like a whip, making the less experienced ones wince. The veterans just stared back at her with hardened eyes, reluctant to submit to her unofficial authority, but loath to challenge it directly — not someone who was affiliated with Saul, who had been as good as a daughter to him.

Which was exactly what she'd been counting on.

"You want to see Saul Guerra, don't you?" said the captain, and Jyn gave a terse nod in response. "Then _walk_."

Jyn glanced back to make sure that they were following, and one by one, they fell into step behind her as Saul's resistance led them into the trees.

"Is that how you used to speak to them — when you were still with Guerra?" Cassian asked in an undertone, looking at their surroundings while they tramped through the leaves.

Jyn shrugged. "Maybe. Why?"

Cassian's face was bruised, and she recognized the strains of fatigue in every line of him, but his quiet smile made all of it matter a little less, just for a second. "Nothing," he answered. "I'm starting to see why they remember you."

* * *

The walk through the forest might have been thirty minutes, maybe more, but to a group of exhausted, battered people, time stretched as long and slow as syrup. Jyn felt something in her side — more noticeable than the normal aches and pain of worn muscles — but it was hidden underneath the grime-and-bloodstained layers she was wearing, out of reach. Maybe it was a bruised rib. She'd have to take a look later, if she got the chance. But she wanted to sleep. Most of all, sleep.

Only she couldn't, because they were taking her to see Saul first, just as she'd asked.

Jyn felt her pulse pick up again, with something that felt almost like panic. What was she going to say to him? Rail at him for abandoning her — before they got to any official business? All this time, dealing with his men and his missions, she'd gambled on the fact that he was as stubborn and set in his ways as she remembered, that no great change had occurred while she was gone.

It might have hurt her too much to imagine that he had, and she hadn't been around to witness it.

Saul clearly had a vision for the fate of the real French Resistance, and it was padded out with bloody fighting and brutal strikes — as shocking and wounding as the snap of a snake from tall grass — unlike the covert intelligence-gathering, radioed messages and silent sabotage that was General Draven's, or whoever else ran the division. They wanted to wait, and watch, and learn. He wanted to burn, raze, and destroy. If the French couldn't have their country, the Germans wouldn't either. Like the stories of defeated villagers burning their homes and killing themselves in order to escape an invading army. Scorched earth, mutual destruction rather than defeat.

How could a man like that be convinced to cooperate?

Arms. He'd get better weapons if he joined with the rest of the factions. Judging by the scars she'd seen — faces, hands, limbs — the quality of weapons they'd been able to get their hands on fell short of satisfactory. Training was lacking too, that was evident in the way they'd handled the attack — clumsy compared to the neat, methodical precision that assassinations were meant to run on. Equipment didn't just pertain to arms. Every resistance needed radio, transmission machines…maybe she could get promises for that…

Absorbed in her thoughts, Jyn's foot slipped on a root, and she almost lost her balance. " _Careful_ ," Cassian said, a hand around her arm.

"Thanks," she muttered. "Are you all right?"

He grunted. "Don't worry about me. Focus on the meeting with Guerra."

A less spent version of Jyn might have rebuffed the suggestion that she was worried about Cassian, but said version was the only one she had left, and she got straight to the point. "I am," she admitted. "I still don't know what I want to say to him. All I can think of is offering him benefits to join — radio, guns, training — which he won't accept."

"Won't he?"

They were both murmuring, careful of being overheard. The risk was lower since they spoke in English, and she remembered how few of Saul's men had spoken it fluently.

Jyn shook her head. "He's an idealist — a fanatic, whatever you'd call him — he can't just switch his position because you're offering him something. He'll say it's bribery. Compromising his morals."

"You're right," Cassian sounded like he was deep in thought. "But you said your name, and his men scrambled to get you to him."

Jyn was confused. "So?"

"It sounds to me like they know you're different to Saul Guerra," Cassian said, with the detached reasoning of an intelligence operative. "Accorded special status. Maybe what you could offer him is…reconciliation. Not just weapons or technology. He'd be getting his daughter back."

Jyn shook her head again, to the point where she started feeling dizzy. "That's not Saul — he was never that kind of father to me."

Cassian didn't answer, but Jyn noticed that the man in front of them had crouched in front of what looked like a bed of leaves at the foot of a hill. His hands rustled through the undergrowth, until he seized something and pulled, something that moved with a creak of metal

A hatch.

The man jerked his head at them, an electric torch in his hand. "In there," he said, and Jyn ducked her head to enter the dark.

Soil gradually became dust, and then they were walking on stone, through twisting caverns that seemed to take them deeper and deeper into the earth. Except the air — far from stale — continued to shift towards them in a state of constant motion, high and cold and clear.

Jyn realized where they were at the first glimpse of daylight. Dawn, to be precise. There was a hole in the rock face, a natural lookout, and she saw the sprawl of the valley beneath them, realizing —

"We're in the mountain," Kay said, sounding as incredulous as she'd ever heard.

Another push, and Jyn found herself in a larger cave connected to the caverns, one that had half its side carved away into a steep drop that led to the valley. The contrast of daylight made her eyes hurt after being in the dark throughout the journey, and she was so busy blinking that she didn't hear the stir of movement at her back, the thud of a stick…

" _Jyn_ ," said a voice she never thought she'd hear again. "Jyn Erso."

Jyn stared sightlessly at Cassian's curious face — he was looking behind her — and turned, slowly, as though it was a nightmare she didn't want to face.

Saul looked like he hadn't aged a day since she last saw him, his dusky skin lined and creased in the exact same places she remembered. His stick was a shock to her at first, though he did his best to hide it, leaning on it in a way that turned what should have been a sign of disability into a symbol of strength and gravitas, to anyone who didn't know him like she did. There was more gray in his beard, but his eyes were still as sharp and hungry as ever, and they traveled over her face, taking her in, as though to see what had become of the warrior girl he'd trained to carry his hopes and dreams.

Jyn realized that he was waiting for her to speak. To recognize him too.

But the words caught in her throat, and Jyn felt suddenly faint — more aware than ever that the floor beneath her feet was unsteady. She fell forward on one knee, bracing her side, and it was only when her hand slipped out from underneath her jacket did she notice the faint red staining on her fingertips. Fresh blood, not just what she'd picked up on her clothes. It dawned on her, a little too late. Not a bruised rib. The blast — the grenade — she'd missed —

" _Oh_ ," she breathed, and the realization made her limbs buckle, as though her body was done unknowingly bearing her burden.

"Jyn?" said Cassian. He might have tried to get to her, but there was a bark of an order to stay back, because Saul was coming forward to see for himself.

"Jyn, what's the matter?" Saul moved towards her, his stick cracking against the stone so loudly — rapid, cacophonous — that it made her flinch. If it were made of flint, she was sure that it would have struck sparks, and Saul would have made them burn. Concern was in his eyes, and the casual hypocrisy of it made Jyn pull herself away on her hands, even though they shook from trying to bear her weight.

Where was he when she'd been delirious from a fever in Marrakech? When she'd had to patch her leg back up stitch by agonizing stitch, after cutting it open during a chase through the back streets of Warsaw, losing the four policeman after her in the process?

 _Not there_ , because he'd dropped her like a piece of cargo. Something that cost more to carry than it was worth.

The memories surged against the barriers she'd forced them behind, like a raging river that refused to be tamed, and her response burst from her lips with a vengeance. Her anger was a force of nature, and in her hurt, all she could do was make sure he saw it.

"Don't touch me," she snarled, when he bent to reach for her. " _Don't touch me._ "

She'd pressed an arm protectively across her middle, only vaguely aware of voices that weren't Saul's or her own, adamant of just one thing — that she didn't want the man who'd abandoned her to help her, never again. Not him. He could look as distressed, as worried, as scared as he liked, but it wouldn't make run to him like she was ten years old again. Never.

"Don't touch me," she repeated, until the words started to lose their meaning.

Her vision was failing her, black seeping like ink to blur out the edges of the picture. A circle of people had formed around her, but no one — not even Saul — dared to disobey while she looked at them with hate.

There was a small scuffle in the background, followed by a shout: " _Jyn!_ "

It wasn't Saul, but she knew the voice, and when a blurred shape pushed forward to break the buffer, she didn't fight back. "Jyn, can you hear me?"

There was a hand on her face now, another feeling for her pulse, and she knew it wasn't Saul's for sure. It wasn't blistered or mottled by scars, cool where her skin felt overheated, flushed. She didn't want fire; she wanted the cool and dark and shadow. She wanted —

Jyn was slipping into unconsciousness fast, but she could have sworn, in a moment of unsubstantiated certainty, that the hand belonged to Cassian (wasn't he supposed to be bound too?), and it was his voice that she heard shouting, just before her eyes lost the fight to keep themselves open, and the chaos around her cut abruptly to black.


	10. Pieced Together

**Pieced Together**

Jyn floated, too light for dreams, too heavy for stupor. Lights flickered behind her closed eyes, but she didn't see.

* * *

Cassian swore when his hand came away from Jyn's side coated in thin sheen of red. The clothes she wore were thick and fitted, and they'd acted as a kind of binding to staunch the bleeding until it got too bad to hide. It was impossible to tell how deep the wound went, or whether the physical exertion of fighting and the long trek to the hideout after the fact had only exacerbated the injury.

She'd passed out, a small mercy only because it stopped her from snarling at anyone who tried to get close, and she was still breathing. One of the few good signs in a day full of things going from bad to worse. "Is there somewhere we can take her?" he asked.

No one answered him.

"This is absolutely ridiculous," Kay snapped, clearly in the middle of an argument. "The girl's our responsibility — our operative — now get rid of these restraints before I use _your_ teeth to do it myself!"

Kay pushed his way forward — dropping a coil of severed rope to one side — and felt efficiently for Jyn's pulse, then the temperature of her forehead. "What happened?" he asked. "Was she shot?"

"Grenade." Cassian was thinking, fast. _Foolish_ , _impulsive_. Not her, him. After the explosion, he'd taken her word for it that she wasn't hurt. Maybe Jyn herself hadn't even noticed — being as single-minded as she was, and he had no doubts whatsoever that Saul Guerra would have consumed her attention, made it impossible to notice a worsening injury until it was too late.

But there wasn't time for that. He was mentally cataloging what medical supplies he had on him — apart from some bandages in his pack and a palm-sized case of sulfa for emergency disinfection in his jacket, the bulk of the supplies were still at the morgue, and Han wouldn't have stayed, knowing they'd missed the meeting time. Cassian didn't fault him for that, what he _did_ fault was the circle of strangers — so-called resistance fighters — standing mutely by while one of theirs bled out.

Maybe that was the point. Jyn _wasn't_ one of theirs anymore.

"Is there somewhere we can take her?" he asked, looking from one unresponsive face to another. No one answered, and he realized there was only one person who might still save Jyn.

Saul Guerra, who was watching the scene in front of him with an expression of impenetrable calm.

"Is there somewhere Jyn can go?" Cassian demanded, not shouting, just close to it. Silence, and he tried again, searching for pressure points, short and succinct ways to make helping Jyn worth his while.

The man was stunned and hiding it well, but this was his adopted daughter appearing out of nowhere, changed and hostile with unresolved bitterness, now in a precarious condition because of a wound none of them had managed to anticipate. Whatever Guerra was now, he wasn't the fearless guerrilla general who'd thrown German order into turmoil in Brittany, or ordered the assassination of a high-ranking Nazi official just hours before. He was a man who'd been assaulted by a personal shock — seeing Jyn suddenly after years of no contact — and suddenly faced with the prospect of losing the only person he might have truly loved apart from the cause, right in front of his eyes.

"She's your daughter," he said fiercely, and something in the man's impassive gaze seemed to splinter like a coat of ice.

His scarred hands clenched and unclenched around the staff he leaned on, and he turned suddenly with purpose, starting to walk.

"Come," he ordered, the sound of his solid staff disappearing into the stone archway. "Follow me."

Kay didn't seem to think the sudden shift into helpfulness was particularly trustworthy, but he frowned, supporting Jyn's head, clearly resigned to not having a choice in the matter. Cassian slipped his aching arms beneath Jyn's knees, passed the other under her shoulders, and lifted her carefully off the ground. She weighed less than he'd expected when she wasn't fighting him to get free — somehow the thought scared him worse than the wound in her side.

"Just a little longer," he said to Jyn, knowing she couldn't hear it. "Just hold on."

Then they followed Guerra into the stone maze.

* * *

Jyn shifted, and one arm slipped from the canvas cot she was on, her rust-colored fingertips curving against the dusty floor. Cassian had to force himself to keep going with what he was doing, not to stray anywhere close to the makeshift operating table until he'd gotten what he needed. The job at hand was searching through his and Jyn's packs after the rebels had finally turned them over, along with the store of supplies the resistance fighters had only grudgingly made available — because Saul had given the order. Moving quickly and silently, he dumped anything that needed sterilizing into the small pot of water heating over the portable burner and carried the rest over to the side of the cot.

Guerra wasn't in the room; he'd gone to give more orders, tame the opposition to outsiders being allowed to use their precious resources — unsupervised, no less. Cassian preferred it that way; having someone Jyn clearly hadn't wanted close by felt like a conflict of interest, a distraction. Better that he stayed away for as long as possible.

Cassian returned Jyn's limp arm back to her side, but that was the extent of comfort he could provide. They needed all hands on deck, and Cassian didn't trust anyone but himself and Kay to help. Chirrut and Baze had saved their lives (that was true, and he didn't dispute it) but this was _Jyn_.

Neither of them had been part of the plan to take Jyn from the prison transport truck. To tell her that her father was in fact alive, not dead as she'd believed. Neither of them had been with her at the training camp. Neither of them had boarded the plane that flew all three of them into France. It was an unspoken connection — for Cassian at least — and it ran less on obligation, but on responsibility.

He couldn't abandon her now.

The smell of carbolic soap clashed with the rusty tang of blood — new _and_ old — and Kay, his hands smelling strongly of disinfectant, carefully rolled back the hem of Jyn's shirt to see the wound.

This didn't surprise Cassian. Kay was a stickler for manners and decency, but he also had a sense of priorities, and the ability to detach from the situation at will, in a way Cassian had never really managed to learn. It was field treatment, pure and simple. Apologies could wait for later — if Jyn even cared, which she probably didn't. There were more scars on her abdomen than Cassian had been prepared for, cuts that healed as silvery lines, and something that looked like a burn. There were probably more hidden beneath her clothes and never talked about. He knew the feeling.

Blood from the wound had seeped into the fabric, giving the illusion that it was worse than in reality. The actual injury was no more than an inch long, located to the side of her ribs and oozing slower now.

"What a thoroughly stubborn girl. Trust her to collapse instead of telling us that she was bleeding," Kay muttered, swiping at the site of the wound with gauze. "The fragment might have nicked one of her ribs, but it doesn't look like it managed to puncture her lungs, that's good news. But we're going to have to turn her — I need to see if the fragment made it out the other side."

Cassian took Jyn's shoulders and waited for Kay to signal. They'd done this before, after all. On the silent count of three, he lifted, rolling her towards the wall and holding her steady while Kay probed at the skin. "Can't feel an exit wound," he said. "Unusual for close range detonations."

"She grabbed a German officer and used him as a human shield," Cassian said, and saw Kay's mouth twitch in something like pride. "He got the worst of it."

"Of course she did," he said, gesturing for Cassian to lay Jyn down flat again. "Now this is the grisly part."

"You don't have to tell me," Cassian said, already checking his flashlight. "Just hurry."

"Right you are." Calm as ever, Kay dried the pair of forceps he'd picked out of the hot water and started to probe at the tear in her flesh. "You do know that there's an 82% chance that a wound like this will lead to some kind of infection, don't you?"

"I survived mine," he said. "It's not impossible."

Kay inclined his head, still feeling for the fragment. "I suppose you have a point," he murmured, as though speaking any louder would cause the fragment to burrow deeper. "Stubborn girl. Now I think…I've got it. Hold very still now."

Cassian heard a noise, and looked over his shoulder. For a man built as tall and broad as Guerra, he had the quiet tread of a pawed cat, and he nodded at Cassian, not saying a word.

There was a gruesome squelch and Cassian looked back around. The fragment was clenched between the forceps, almost black with clotted blood and flesh, and Kay smeared it onto a piece of gauze with relish. "There. Can't cause further trouble."

 _Thunk. Thunk_. "How is she?"

Guerra's English bore an undercurrent of some indefinable accent, possibly a combination of all the places he'd traveled and lived, but his voice carried the suggestion that it could flare like a lion's roar, just as quickly as it might quiet to a low hum.

"The fragment's been extracted, sir," Kay said, reaching for the disinfectant now. "All we can do is suture and dress the wound and hope for the best. But I'd expect a fever as the body fights the infection."

"You speak like a doctor," Guerra was eyeing Kay with the measuring gaze of someone curious. In some strange, reverse way, having Jyn's blood on their hands seemed to have softened him towards them, like it was proof that they weren't enemies.

"My parents wanted me to become one, but that's about as far as it gets, I'm afraid," Kay said. He sprinkled powdered sulfa into the wound and picked up the gleaming suture, all the while watched by Guerra.

"And you?" Guerra's attention was on Cassian now, while Kay worked quietly and quickly in front of them. "What did your parents want for their son?"

The turn in conversation was borderline absurd, certainly inappropriate, but to Cassian it felt like a test. "I don't know what they wanted," he answered, with his sparing honesty. "They died before they could tell me."

Kay — aware of the story in detail — glanced at Cassian, but refrained from comment. No one spoke until Kay had finished a row of neat sutures and nodded his head in a signal that they could start dressing the wound. Cassian helped sit Jyn up again while Kay wound a roll of gauze around her middle.

He had to be on the bed to do it, and Jyn's head rested heavily on his shoulder, her face turned towards his neck. He could feel the sweat on her skin soaking through his clothes, the heat off her exposed skin and the smell of her — ash, metal, blood…a girl who could fight wars and fight _on_ , until the last breath. She was steadier now, the rhythm of inhale-exhale deepening, like she was sleeping instead of being merely non-responsive, and he felt strangely self-conscious, yet simultaneously defiant at this closeness, despite being in front of Guerra.

"Done," Kay announced, and after a second's hesitation, Cassian laid Jyn carefully back onto the pillow again. There was only a coarse blanket to cover her with, but he pulled it up anyway to shield the bandage from view, and they both moved back with a mutual huff of relief. It was just starting, the process of recovering from a potentially infectious wound, but for now it felt like they'd done well.

Guerra nodded, his catlike eyes lingering on Jyn for only a moment more, then he turned and seated himself on the empty cot across the small room. Unlike the rest of his men, Guerra kept his long coat draped around his powerful shoulders, as though to always be prepared for an attack, but as the folds fell back to show his arms from fingertip to elbow, Cassian saw that the skin had been obliterated by permanent burns, resembling the moving extensions of a scar rather than healthy limbs. The sight would have made him feel sick, if he wasn't more focused on the situation at hand.

 _This_ was the famed Saul Guerra.

"Who are you?" he asked, smoothing his scarred hands across the staff resting in front of his knees. "Who are you, really?"

Cassian was standing at the head of the cot where Jyn slept, and he looked sidelong at Kay, who nodded.

"My name is Captain Cassian Andor," he said, and gestured to Kay, seated at Jyn's bedside. "This is Major James Kay. We're operatives for the Resistance."

"The Resistance?" Guerra said, immediately touching on the distinction. "So are we."

"Well, that's not currently true, is it, Mr Guerra?" Kay said bluntly. "We know that you were recently presented with an invitation to join General De Gaulle along with the other factions of French freedom fighters, but you declined. In a manner of speaking."

"When two men both fight against the same enemy, why does it make a difference whether one takes orders from a General all the way in England, and another to a dreamer living in the mountains?" Guerra queried.

"It shouldn't," Cassian said, starting to see elements of Guerra in Jyn. "Not if both men truly fight for the same cause."

"You know as well as I that General De Gaulle does not see it quite so simply," Guerra said. "I am a madman to them, am I not?"

Neither Cassian nor Kay answered the question, more so because it felt like Guerra hadn't been asking, not really.

He inhaled deeply, and dropped the end of his staff solidly against the stone floor. "But it can wait. Now is not the time to talk of complex matters such as this — you're both tired, and I wish to sit with Jyn for a while. If you are both in need of transport, I'm sure passage can be arranged to wherever you need to go."

Cassian tensed, and so did Kay. "Why would we be going anywhere?" Kay asked, clearly suspicious that it was Guerra's way of saying they weren't welcome in the resistance stronghold.

Guerra only smiled slightly. "You are Resistance operatives, are you not? I'm sure that I have delayed your mission. You need not be delayed any further — simply inform my captain of where you wish to be taken, and we'll do our best to ensure you make your schedule."

Cassian reached out and put his hand on Kay's shoulder. Guerra didn't know that he was the mission, only that Jyn had demanded a meeting with him — equally a possibility because she'd thought her teammates were about to be killed.

He didn't see a reason why Guerra needed to find out from anyone except Jyn herself, especially since his stance didn't seem to have changed. Cassian could wrestle with Guerra's riddles and circular questions to the best of his ability, but Jyn had been right — Guerra needed something more, something _higher_ , in order to justify a change as monumental as merging with the greater Resistance factions.

Which meant they needed time.

"With all due respect, Mr Guerra, Jyn Erso is our responsibility," Cassian said. "We recruited her, we were responsible for training her, and we won't be going anywhere until she wakes up."

"We may require the use of your transmission equipment to inform our superiors of the unexpected turn of events, but I am in full agreement with Captain Andor," Kay added, his hands folded. "We stay until Miss Erso recovers. At your discretion, of course."

After a pause, Guerra nodded. "As you wish," he said. "I myself concur with Captain Andor. We have a common enemy, and more importantly — it seems as though you have worked to save Jyn's life. You have my thanks for that."

"Even if I killed one of your men?" Cassian said frankly, because if he was going to stay — it would have to be addressed.

Guerra's cat eyes flashed at the question, his fire flaring in a striking resemblance to Jyn when she was challenged. But a second later, it was gone. "I am informed that my soldier was careless. He endangered Jyn's life. It is unfortunate, but I would choose Jyn over the alternative."

 _Yet you abandoned her,_ Cassian thought, a sentiment he made sure was kept carefully hidden from Guerra's searching eyes. Hidden, not forgotten. He'd seen the way Jyn fought back when she thought Guerra was trying to help her. The wounds ran deep between them.

 _There's a part of her that is broken beyond repair, and it's because of you_.

Guerra moved towards the doorway. It was roughly shaped, and the only thing functioning as a partition was a worn but thick curtain that he pulled aside now. "Your two friends are waiting for you at the north camp — just outside," he said. "I'll see to it that you all have beds there, and access to our transmission equipment."

It was unmistakably a dismissal, and Kay moved to answer it. "She'll need a saline drip, and someone to monitor her condition," he said, and Guerra nodded.

"I'll make sure of it."

Kay gathered up the packs in one hand and walked to the door, only noticing when he reached it that Cassian was slower to respond. He rolled his sleeves back down and took his bloodstained jacket from the back of the cot, resisting the urge to brush Jyn's forehead as passed.

Guerra had known her longer and better than Cassian ever could, but there was a part of him that didn't want to entrust her care over to an unpredictable stranger like him.

"Thank you," Guerra said, taking the seat Kay vacated and pulling a basin of clear water towards him, along with a rag. "That will be all, Captain Andor."

In the end, it was Kay tugging on Cassian's arm that made him leave, and the curtain fell on Guerra tending to Jyn in stoic silence.

* * *

A piece of firewood broke off from the larger log and scattered with a fall of amber sparks, glowing like molten lava at the heart of the circle of stones. Cassian watched Baze reach a stick into the fire to stoke the embers without much interest. The focus of his attention was sitting on the dusty floor of the cave along with him, a whirring transmitter-receiver radio currently tuned to pick up one of the F-section's designated frequencies. He kept one hand resting on the metal surface while it continued to hum, holding the headset to his ear with the other.

Snatches of music played through the static, but not the one he was waiting for. Every few minutes, he glanced at the curtain just down one of the cavern paths, as though it might move aside and Jyn would step out, paler but smiling, announcing that she was starving — and more importantly — all right.

It had been two days since she'd passed out. Around twelve hours since she'd started drifting in and out of a fever. Slightly less than that since Kay had stubbed out his sixth cigarette of the day and announced that Cassian would leave Jyn alone to sleep, under the threat of deeply unpleasant consequences if he didn't listen.

So now she was just resting, and they were waiting for her to wake up.

Not solely because they needed her for the mission, to convince Saul Guerra and compensate for the spectacularly bad turn events in Nantes had taken, the assassination they hadn't planned for but still hadn't been able to stop. Cassian didn't need superhuman foresight to know that the German reprisal had been swift, and vicious.

He told himself that first and foremost, he needed to know was whether they were likely to fail completely in their mission.

But he also needed to know that Jyn was going to be all right.

Kay caught his eye, and Cassian shook his head. He didn't look surprised, even if they had the good luck of using the transmission equipment belonging to Guerra's faction, receiving the messages — especially with the kind of signal they were likely to get here — would take some time. They'd sent their transmission yesterday, today was receiving the response, if any.

So far, it didn't seem forthcoming.

"You haven't eaten, Captain Andor," said Chirrut.

Cassian glanced up. Chirrut was sitting on a rock beside him, his head tilted inquisitively as though he'd meant it as a question. The staff he held was slim and elongated compared to the one Guerra used, the latter being heftier and warped naturally like the branch they'd made it from. Chirrut's was graceful, polished smooth like an old-fashioned bow, even though the surface was scored with nicks and dents where it had been used for a fight.

Chirrut tapped the ground in front of Cassian's feet, as though to call his attention back to the one-sided conversation, and he stirred. "I have, a bit," he said. "I'm not hungry."

In fact, the bowl of half-finished stew was sitting exactly where he'd set it down and promptly forgotten about the matter, and Cassian couldn't really find the appetite to finish it.

Apart from listening to the transmissions, he was absorbing all he could about state of Saul Guerra's resistance. Few agents he knew had ever made it past the door to find one of their hideouts, much less the main stronghold, and met the leader in question face to face. It was…impressive, in its own way, though he doubted General Draven would agree. He'd call them disorganized, content to live on the fringes of existence and call themselves noble vagabonds along the lines of Robin Hood and his band of thieves. Cassian saw things a little differently.

Their choice of location was bold, but advantageous. The mountains were best known only to a few, and even fewer locals would be brave enough to wander. They had the higher vantage point, and escape routes were abundant, if they were to be discovered. The tunnels were also vast enough to allow them to abandon one sector completely and rebuild in another, almost like the severed heads of a hydra. In terms of comfort, the mountains were cold, and the living standards were by nature meant to be crude, though the faction had succeeded in making comforts to mitigate the harshness of stone and earth. They made individual caves into pockets that resembled barrack assignments, putting teams together in their respective clusters. Everyone slept in bedrolls and in flapped tents — cots were only for the infirmary or maybe Guerra's residence.

Sleep wasn't problematic, supplies were. Routes would have to be constant and stockpiles carefully managed, and they'd need separate camps for vehicles to be on constant watch — those couldn't be stored within the caves, but would have to be in the forest itself.

Still, every location had its weaknesses, and Guerra had founded himself a stronghold in spite of it.

"Jyn was breathing easier the last time I saw her," Chirrut said, referring to sight with a complete lack of irony. "I've been praying for her recovery. I think she'll wake soon."

Cassian made a non-committal noise in response. He'd gotten well acquainted with Chirrut's strange — sometimes nonsensical — relationship with his religion, even though what he assumed was some branch of Christian faith seemed to constantly be expressed in the vaguest terms by the man himself, as though he was content to refer only to a so-called _Higher Power_ with exactly that amount of specificity.

"I told HQ yesterday that we met you and Baze," Cassian said. "We'll see what they say about whether you'll have to stay with us."

"See, Chirrut?" Baze rumbled, from across the fire pit. "He can't wait to get rid of us. You've irritated him with your rambling."

Chirrut seemed unbothered, even amused by his friend's skepticism. "Baze doesn't believe prayers will work to aid Jyn's recovery."

"Because it can't, and _won't_ ," Baze interjected.

"He knows it's possible," Chirrut said, calmly, "because once, he believed too."

Cassian shut his eyes, mentally preparing himself for another round of articulate bickering courtesy of Baze and Chirrut, an exchange that always ended up straying between the dredging up of personal (and obscure) incidents in their shared history, and quasi-theological-philosophical discussion.

The argument lasted shorter than he'd steeled himself for, because Cassian heard something, and immediately threw up his hand. Kay shushed the other two, and let Cassian have the silence he needed to write out the code phrases as he heard them. Ink was getting on his fingers from how fast he was doing it, but Cassian didn't care, and neither did they.

No one spoke when he dropped the headset and started to translate the scribbled code. As he wrote, checking his work as he did, Cassian felt his heart sink.

 _Oberstleutnant S confirmed kill. Twenty hostages dead in C prison camp. More taken from Nantes. Estimate fifty._

There was more, but Cassian stopped — he made himself stop — and let the feeling of guilt spread inside him, filing the nooks and crannies of his consciousness with the dark, still water that came from knowing he'd caused irreparable damage.

 _There won't_ be _people left to save if all you're ordered to do is strike deals and talk in backrooms_ , Jyn had said. She'd been angry, lashing out at the restrictiveness of their orders that meant they could only look down and keep moving while non-mission objectives met their fate.

His fist clenched on top of the machine, and he was tempted to bring it down with a crash, but after a deep, slow breath, he pressed on — he had to. The next part he nearly skimmed through, writing out a minimal, almost clinical recounting of the German response to the assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, all while he resolved to compartmentalize the guilt for later. He wouldn't push it aside and forget. He'd make sure it got its day, just when he wasn't surrounded by people, and they weren't waiting for news.

 _Threats of reprisals made. Ten French for one German, innocent or guilty no relevance._

 _G must NOT take responsibility for assassination. Mission now imperative. Unite, or we lose France. Two Nantes operatives will remain with R team, provide any assistance necessary. Please confirm receipt._

Cassian had reached the last part, and he paused, because it had been marked as a personal message by the use of his agent designator. He spaced out the fresh message, decoding it at the bottom of the page so it would be easy to tear off once he was finished reading.

 _Fulcrum —_  
 _Orders regarding Outsider still stand. Injury may be convenient opportunity to establish further trust. Unification must succeed, whatever the cost. Awaiting your personal report._  
 _— D_

Cassian read through the message once more, like it was possible to change the words, then tore the page across from right to left with sudden venom, as though a reminder of his orders was a kind of corruption, something that tainted the whole just by being. But Cassian balled his part of the message up in his hand and thrust the remaining sheet of paper towards Kay. He got to his feet while his friend read through the news, hands on his hips. He didn't want to stay here, not where he was. He wanted quiet. He wanted to be alone.

Baze raised his eyebrows, and Chirrut just waited. Kay was still reading, and Cassian held off long enough for him to finish, nod, before he broke the news. "It looks like you'll be staying with us for a little while more," he said. "Welcome to Rogue team."

Baze's first response was to tear off a piece of stale bread. "That's a terrible name," he said, munching on the food.

"Good to know," Cassian answered, just as flatly.

"Where are you off to?" Kay asked, watching him stride towards the mouth of the cave.

"A walk," Cassian said shortly.

He dropped the crumpled sliver of paper into the heart of the roaring fire as he went, and watched just long enough to make sure it burned.

"Cassian —"

"Don't worry, Major," Chirrut said, in a voice as tranquil as still water. "He won't go far."

* * *

Cassian had, in fact, taken a walk. He'd gone about as far as the exit tunnel outside the north camp, the ones that descended into the central passageway. The geography of the Guerra faction's hideout had every appearance of a labyrinth, but Cassian was sure that there was an internal logic to the system — or else everyone would be as lost as he surely would be, if he ventured beyond the north camp.

Maybe Jyn would know her way around. She'd been their Golden Thread so far, where deciphering the labyrinth of Guerra's mind was concerned.

Lingering in the tunnels with no apparent purpose had its risks as well. Whichever entranceway he passed was usually flanked by one or two resistance, maybe more, and they watched him with hard, unwelcoming eyes. He didn't doubt that word had spread about what he'd done in Nantes, and the retaliation should have been brutal and swift, but judging by how he'd gone without attack since his arrival, Guerra's order must have been the differential factor — for himself, Kay, Chirrut and Baze.

Cassian thought it best to keep moving. He was approaching the entrance to the team's camp again, but he didn't feel like going back, not now.

So he paused at the curtain screening Jyn's recovery room from view. He shifted the curtain aside with one arm, noting with silent relief that Guerra wasn't sitting with her today.

Cassian glanced at the camp again, just to make sure Kay wasn't watching. Baze wouldn't care, Chirrut probably already knew, leaving Kay's _unpleasant consequences_ (a lecture, probably) as the only factor requiring him to be careful. But no one was facing the entrance, so he took his chance and ducked through.

The air was a little different inside the small stone alcove that functioned as an infirmary. It lacked the smokiness of the camps, but was colder for the absence of a fire. It was darker too, with only the unsteady light of oil lamps — even then, used sparingly — to illuminate the windowless space.

There was only one burning on a shelf, casting a broad orange glow across the stone. Cassian checked the saline drip hanging up by the bed before he sat down in the empty chair by the cot, settling in despite the formality of telling himself that he was only going to stay for a while this time.

Jyn looked smaller when she slept, as though the reason for the disparity was linked to her presence, her animation, the _fire_ that had burned bright from the second he'd laid eyes on her. She also looked as young as she was, just eighteen, lying in bed with the wounds — and faded scars — of a full-grown soldier.

Cassian grimaced, and took his hand from Jyn's forehead after feeling her temperature. She was still running a little hot, but it was no worse than before. More time, more sleep — besides changing the dressing on her wound, the fight was hers. They'd done all they could.

The scrap of paper he'd tossed into the fire was the furthest thing from his mind, even though it made his throat tight, having to wrestle with the integrity of what he was doing. His orders treated a measure of trust as a utilitarian thing, and Cassian didn't need to be told of the irony in Jyn questioning his apparent dedication to following them.

Only she didn't know about _this_ particular command, and Cassian didn't want her to ever find out. He saw the weight of what he held with regards to Jyn, whether she'd meant for it to happen or not. To her, trust was far from a tool serving a practical purpose, something that could be traded like cheap currency.

To her, it was a wound of its own. It kept the people around her at a distance, it caused her to turn inward while lashing out at anyone who strayed beyond the boundary line, like the easiest thing to do was be the outsider she'd always been.

Small wonder it had become her code name.

Cassian folded his arms in front of his chest and shifted his body into a more comfortable position. It would be better to lean against a wall instead of a chair back, but in some strange, nonsensical way, Cassian didn't want the first thing Jyn saw when she woke up to be an empty room, not after everything. She clearly had an expectation that no one could be counted on except herself.

It was almost his business these days to prove her wrong, and not because he'd been given orders to make an asset trust him.

Cassian had lived his life following orders like those, and this was something else. Because gaining an asset's trust — like so many he'd successfully managed to before — didn't mean reciprocating with trust of his own, and it was past time he admitted that his wants where Jyn was concerned were independent of anything General Draven might order him to do.

He'd trusted her judgment about their approach in Nantes, leaving Kay behind despite the fact that having him with them might have made the fight at the tavern less dangerous. He was putting his trust in her right now — by not trying to manipulate Guerra himself with his knowledge of the single pressure point that mattered, trusting that she would be the one to ensure the mission was a success.

Trust and faith.

It was straying from his orders, though not outright disobedience. Testing the implicit limits of what he could and couldn't do, and now he was in the gray. More importantly — it was too late for him to turn back now.

Strangely enough, the knowledge perturbed Cassian less than he thought it would.

* * *

Jyn felt like she'd dreamed, she just couldn't remember. They lurked at the back of her mind, along with scattered images of things — people — that may or may not have been real. It was like lying at the bottom of a river, swept along by currents out of her control, only intermittently resurfacing at moments that were out of her hands.

There was the blurred sight of a scarred hand dabbing at her heated face with a cold cloth, one that she'd wanted to shrink away from, but hadn't had the strength to. So she'd just closed her eyes and let the water swallow her again.

There was a soothing, deep voice that sounded almost like Chirrut's, forming words that bore some resemblance to prayer.

Her mother's soothingly cool touch on her face, and her father propping Jyn up with his arm, sitting up beside her with a book in his lap. No — not real — it was from all the times she'd been sick, occasions just by themselves because of how rarely they came about. Her parents used to drop everything to sit at her bedside, anything she wanted, stories, food, toys, back when…

No — _no_.

Jyn sank again, and it seemed like an age before she resurfaced again, this time to an unknown place. The sandy color of the ceiling above her head stirred a memory somewhere, a thread that her mind — feather-light, thin as a wisp — drifted to follow.

Marrakech. She was fifteen. She'd collapsed into bed with a fever after two days in the blistering hot sun, trying to evade the dealers in Casablanca who were after her blood.

No, that wasn't right. Her forehead creased, as she began to probe the various sensations at her limbs, which didn't seem to be entirely willing to do her bidding. There was something in her arm, what —

Jyn's head turned on the pillow, seemingly by the force of gravity acting on its immovable weight, rather than out of human effort, and she took in the needle taped to the inside bend of her forearm, connected to the rubber tube that snaked up to a suspended clear bottle of fluid…

 _What the —_

Jyn seized whatever reserves of strength she had left and groped with her left arm to try and pry the needle loose. She'd just been about to rip off the band securing it to her skin when something caught her eye in the general background. Something she hadn't expected.

Cassian was seated in a chair beside the cot, looking distinctly the worse for wear with bruises not quite faded on his skin, cuts that were fresh scabs — but also asleep, his eyes closed and a jacket draped over his knees.

Jyn stared at him in a silent, extended moment of confusion. Then it was like she'd been energized by a snap of electricity, and her gaze — followed a little more sluggishly by her hand — went to the area of the blanket that covered her lower body. The material nearest to her ribs was raised slightly by something running beneath it, and twinged in protest when she applied pressure to the spot.

Bandaged.

It all came rushing back. She winced at the remembered flash of a grenade going off, and _thud_ of the rough landing, like being picked up and thrown, the dead body on top of hers until she'd shoved it off…

Cassian. Jyn's hand went to her face, and she felt her cheeks and neck, a flush rising as she wondered if she'd imagined all of it. Had he been the one who held her after she collapsed? Why did he shout? At who?

 _More questions than answers._

"You're back," Cassian said — suddenly enough that she'd have started if she could.

All the rustling and shifting must have woken him, and Jyn looked over again, feeling incredibly small in her current state. Because he wasn't supposed to be there. They were on a mission to salvage the Resistance, and waiting for one agent to recover from an injury was wasting time they wouldn't get back. Because the smart thing to do would have been to focus his efforts on the task at hand, which meant meeting Saul Guerra at any given opportunity to try and change his mind. Cassian was smart, and so was Kay. They could do it without her, yet —

Cassian was sitting at her bedside, despite being under no obligation to do it.

There was no way he could have known, but Jyn was glad she wasn't waking up alone in an empty room, like she'd done for years.

Her voice rose in her throat, but everything about her mouth was dry, and she had to swallow a few times before speech felt like a remote possibility.

"You look terrible," she croaked, and he gave a huff of laughter at her first choice of words.

"No surprise there," he answered, and Jyn felt her lips clumsily try to mirror his expression, even though the muscles in her face seemed to have forgotten how. The twisted grimace didn't last long and she had to lie back again, her surroundings spinning from the effort.

Upon seeing her struggle to speak, Cassian had immediately reached towards a shelf and retrieved a metal water canteen. He unscrewed the top now and — murmuring an apology — helped support her head as she took a shaky sip.

"What — what time is it?" she asked hoarsely.

Her voice still sounded like an invalid's — which she hated — but it wasn't something she could fix outside of rest and recovery.

And she had questions.

Cassian shook his head. "That doesn't matter. What do you remember?"

Based off his response, she guessed that it had been a while. Which begged the question — what was he still doing here? But Cassian was waiting for her answer (maybe concerned about a possible head trauma), and Jyn winced. "Grenade," she said. "Missed it. My fault."

"No it wasn't," he said evenly. "Good thing we had the supplies to treat it. You've been ill — you're still running a slight fever, actually."

"Oh." Jyn didn't know quite what to say. She'd always treated physical illness, short of anything that hampered her ability to walk, as something to be de-prioritized until a more opportune moment.

But this didn't seem like good timing at all.

Jyn stared hard at the ceiling, trying to decide whether she'd imagined Saul caring for her during said fever, or whether he'd tried — in some perversely careless way — to make up for his shortfalls as an adoptive parent. Maybe it was guilt.

Or maybe there just hadn't been anything to take up his time. Did fanatical resistance factions have days off?

"So," she said, after a long, slow breath. "You've met Saul."

Cassian seemed to be playing for time before he answered her implicit question, and reached for a basin of water she hadn't noticed before, wringing out a damp rag and putting it on her forehead with surprising fastidiousness. She'd assumed that anything related to missions and official orders wouldn't receive the same level of attention, but he even made sure to fold it to fit the width of her forehead, and smoothed down the corners with his fingers.

Then he sat back again, seemingly satisfied, and smiled a little, looking at the cot frame, rather than directly at her. "He's an interesting man," he said. "Charismatic. I can see why he has as many followers as he does."

"And the mission?" Jyn asked. "Did he —"

Cassian was thinking again, choosing his words. "We confirmed where each side stands," he said. "Same enemy, but that's as far as it went. I didn't think it was a good idea to push it at the time — Guerra was clearly worried about you. His mind wouldn't have been on the negotiation."

Jyn found a small, mirthless smile at that. "You should have pressed on," she said flatly. "I'm sure Saul wouldn't have minded."

"I would have," Cassian said, simply. "I was worried too."

Then, a little too late, he added, "we all were."

"What time is it?" Jyn asked again, trying to steer the conversation back towards the mission. To do her part even though she'd already slowed them down, advise him on how Saul thought, what he might be able to say —

Cassian's understated smile was one of the warmest things Jyn could bring to mind, and as though he could tell what she was thinking, he touched his hand to her forehead again, not because of her fever this time, but maybe — and she wasn't sure — maybe because he wanted her to stop worrying about anything except herself.

"Doesn't matter," he repeated gently. "Sleep. There's all the time in the world."

Jyn wondered if he remembered what she'd said to him — after her nightmare. It must have been a day ago, maybe even less.

 _This is why I sleep alone._

In her physically weakened state (which she still hated), Jyn must have given something away in her expression, because Cassian tipped his head to one side. "Unless you want me to go?"

He was teasing her, and in a strange, giddy way, Jyn didn't mind. She didn't want him to know — yet — how important it was, this. How something so outwardly small, _trivial_ , could mean almost the world in terms of change.

 _Her_ world, anyway.

"No," she said, so softly that she wondered if he heard her. Then, a little louder: "Stay."

There weren't a lot of things Jyn remembered, exhausted by the fever and everything else, but she did remember Cassian sitting at her side when she drifted off to sleep again, feeling safer than she had in a good long while because she knew she had a friend.


End file.
